Engineers,
Are you just plain fed up with having spam in your e-mail folder every single day? Do you want to help protect yourself from the dangers of viruses or phishing scams that are spread by email? There may be a way…!
The reason spam is so prevalent is because of the nature of the current e-mail delivery standard. Anybody can create an email account and anybody can then send an email message to anybody else. You don’t need permission and there is no approval process. Anyone can just send messages into your Inbox.
There are obviously some advantages to the open nature of email. Yes, you can receive annoying spam or dangerous scams or message containing viruses, but you can also easily connect with anybody without much hassle. Deciding whether you want to look for a safer approach is a risk management decision that is a personal preference.
If you are interested in other options, you might to interested in Kontafirst which is dedicated to providing a spam free email service.
Kontafirst is based on the idea that you receive e-mails only from people you have added to your contact list. This is more inconvenient than traditional email, but guarantees you will not be getting scammed or be receiving annoying email messages. Kontafirst is still in development, but with the continued prevalence of email fraud projects like these will continue to gain momentum. Right now Kontafirst has a campaign on Indiegogo here. The developers are looking to raise a small amount of money to purchase a dedicated web server and if you are interested you can contribute to see more research into this type of email service which aims to eliminate spam.
It’s also possible to achieve some of the same objective within your regular email account. It doesn’t matter if you are using Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or something else, it is always important to be safe and vigilant. For example, be smart and don’t click everything that shows up in your Inbox! If it sounds too good to be true it’s probably a scam and you should simply delete the message immediately, especially if it’s not from someone you know. Clicking links in these type of emails can send you to a webpage that will infect your computer with a virus. Your email provider will try to prevent spam, but some messages will always get past their filters so you must be careful.
What do you think?
Do you have any other ideas to help make email more secure?
What do you think about projects like Kontafirst that are trying to turn email into a “deny all” by default rather than the traditional “allow all” by default approach? Will this work, or is the ideal solution somewhere in middle-ground?
Post a comment below to discuss!
