5 things you did not know about Spamdrain

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Do you know that there are a few hidden tips at Spamdrain? Well, actually, they are not hidden, but just easy to miss. Here are some hints that can make your friendship with our Spamster even stronger. Check out below:

1. There are two lists where you can put email addresses: Whitelist and Blacklist. As you can guess from the names, there is a possibility to add unwanted email addresses to the blacklist and forbid some annoying spammers to get into your inbox. With the whitelist you can let your favorite email addresses get into your Inbox without any obstacles.

2. Sharing our services is cool! Yes, of course, you have seen that you can provide a friend with a link from here and get free months. But did you know that four recommendations to the friends with one email address will give you one year of free filtering of one email address? Don’t miss this opportunity and check it right now!

3. Our Spamster is so cool that once people saw him on the main page, they do not scroll down to explore for more. At the bottom of the main page you can see that we have pages at social media networks:
you-should-follow-us

4. Email lists filter. There is a possibility to filter messages depending on their type in the allowed and blocked lists:

1-allowed-filtered-list 1-blocked-filtered-list

5. Do you know what’s making our Spamster happy? Each added email address! It is a little step to the world full of clean Inboxes!

5 tips on how to write an email effectively

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Here are the most common tips that our spamster has gathered for his users:

1) Specify the subject field
Always clarify the subject with the words related to the message. Try to put the subject line that will describe the content of the entire letter. Never leave the subject line empty. Using the words like: attention, important, discount etc., could lead your message to the spam folder and there is a chance your message will never reach its recipients.

2) Sign your letters
Signature in a courteous manner shows your attitude to the recipient. Do not forget to add to your signature words like sincerely, regards or just BR. As an option, create a signature in your email client and it will be added at the end of the letter automatically.

3) Respond promptly
I guess, everyone had a situation waiting for an email reply for too long. Therefore, there is no need to make other people waiting. Even replying with something like: “Unfortunately busy at the moment, will reply tomorrow” will let the sender know that you are aware of the message.

4) CC or BCC ?
If you’d like to share your message with other recepients, besides the primary addressee, you can use CC or BCC fields. The abbreviation CC indicates those who are to receive a copy of an e-mail addressed to another person. The list of receipients in CC is shown for all other recepients of the message. BCC field, on the contrary, is available for hidden notification, not visible to any other receivers (including those in BCC). Indicating that you are adding a new participant to the list of recievers is considered a good practice.

 
5) Email address can be hacked
Do not send your passwords, confidential information, personal information etc. via email. Remember to update your email password regularly and with the secure, hard to guess password.

I hope those tips will be useful before clicking on send 🙂
Sincerely yours,
Spamdrain’s spamster

POP3 and IMAP: basics and differences

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Spamdrain filtering supports two type of connections: IMAP and POP3.

POP3 is an internet protocol to retrieve email. Email messages are delivered and stored on your personal computer, mobile device or any other tablet or phone. When you check e-mail, read it, it is downloaded it to your computer and immediately deleted from the server. This means that read e-mail on the computer will not be accessible on the phone.
IMAP on the other hand saves and stores all your e-mail messages on the server. The advantage of IMAP access is that you can check and send e-mails on multiple devices because you always interact with a mail server and not just one device. IMAP protocol is better and more modern than POP3 protocol. Using IMAP connection allows you to store emails on the server and always have access to them (with the internet connection of course ). There is also an advantage of POP3 connection: you can read e-mails even when you are offline.

Each of these protocols provides secure and non-encrypted ports:

Port 995 – this is the default port to use in order to connect using POP3 securely     Port 110 – this is the default POP3 non-encrypted port

Port 993 – this is the default port to use in order to connect using IMAP securely     Port 143 – this is the default IMAP non-encrypted port

Those settings at Spamdrain could be changed here:

https://spamdrain.com/en/app.html#/settings

Our Inbox is clean from Spam, hope yours is too 🙂

Email Dictionary: Glossary of Terms You Should Know, Part 2

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Here is the second part of the most common words in email domain that you should be aware of while using email services. 
Email client: The software that recipients use to read email. Some email clients have better support for HTML email than others.
Email header: The section of an email message that contains the sender’s and recipient’s email addresses as well as the routing information.
Email marketing: The use of email (or email lists) to plan and deliver permission-based marketing campaigns.
False positive: A legitimate email message that is mistakenly rejected or filtered by a spam filter.
HTML: HyperText Markup Language – The most commonly used coding language for creating Web pages. HTML can also be used in email messages.
IMAP: Internet Message Access Protocol – A protocol used to retrieve email messages. Most email clients use either the IMAP or the POP protocol.
IP address: An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique identifier for a computer on the Internet. It is written as four numbers separated by periods. Each number can range from 0 to 255. Before connecting to a computer over the Internet, a Domain Name Server translates the domain name into its corresponding IP address.
MIME: Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions – An extension of the original Internet email standard that allows users to exchange text, audio or visual files.
Phishing is a technique for acquiring information such as user names, passwords, credit cards, social security numbers and other personal data by masquerading as a trusted business like a bank or credit card company. With phishing messages, the email appears to be sent by the trusted entity and the consumer is tricked into providing their personal information.
POP: Post Office Protocol – A protocol used to retrieve email from a mail server. Most email clients use either the POP or the newer IMAP protocol.
Protocol: The set of formal rules that describe how to transmit data, especially across a network of computers.
Spoofing is a technique where forged email addresses are used to trick recipients into opening an email because the source has been hidden. This deceptive tactic is used to spread viruses and other malicious programs. Spoofing emails are often sent out as pretending to be large companies trying to steal your account info by having you click a link and enter your account credentials.
Server: A program that acts as a central information source and provides services to programs in the same or other computers. The term can either refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running.
SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol – A protocol used to send email on the Internet. SMTP is a set of rules regarding the interaction between a program sending email and a program receiving email.
Whitelist: A list of pre-authorized email addresses from which email messages can be delivered regardless of spam filters.

Email Dictionary: Glossary of Terms You Should Know, Part 1

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spamdrain_gpHere are some useful words regarding email domain that our spamster gathered for our users:
Alias: A unique and usually shorter URL (link) that can be distinguished from other links even if they ultimately go to the same Web page. This makes it possible to track which message led viewers to click on the link.
Attachment: An audio, video or other data file that is attached to an email message.
Autoresponder: A computer program that automatically responds with a prewritten message to anyone who sends an email message to a particular email address or uses an online feedback form.
Authentication: A term that refers to standards, such as Sender ID, SPF and DomainKeys/DKIM, that serve to identify that an email is really sent from the domain name and individual listed as the sender. Authentication standards are used to fight spam and spoofing.
Blacklist: A list containing email addresses or IP addresses of suspected spammers. Blacklists are sometimes used to reject incoming mail at the server level before the email reaches the recipient.
Block: An action by an Internet Service Provider to prevent email messages from being forwarded to the end recipient.
Bounce Rate: The rate at which your emails are not delivered. There are two types of bounces, hard and soft, both of which are defined later in this glossary. An acceptable bounce rate is less than 5%.
Bulk Mail: Large scale email marketing sends in which the same content goes to a large group of people.
Bounces: Email messages that fail to reach their intended destination. “Hard” bounces are caused by invalid email addresses, whereas “soft” bounces are due to temporary conditions, such as overloaded inboxes.
Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is an additional layer of email authentication that builds on the two previous authentication methods Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). First and foremost, both SPF and DKIM must be implemented before a DMARC policy can be put into place.
DNS: Domain Name Server (or system): An Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses.
DomainKeys/DKIM: DomainKeys/DomainKeys Identified Mail are cryptographic authentication solutions that add signatures to email messages, allowing recipient sites to verify that the message was sent by an authorized sender and was not altered in transit.
Domain name: A name that identifies one or more IP addresses. Domain names always have at least two parts that are separated by dots (for instance lsoft.com). The part on the left is the second-level domain (more specific), while the part on the right is the top-level domain (more general).
Email: Email allows you to send and receive text, HTML, images and other data files over the Internet. Email is one of the most popular online activities and has become a vital tool for electronic commerce.
Email bounces: Email messages that fail to reach their intended destination. “Hard” bounces are caused by invalid email addresses, whereas “soft” bounces are due to temporary conditions, such as overloaded inboxes.

New Help Articles

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Thanks to our users, we have already updated some articles and added two new help articles at our help center. One of them is regarding Apple two factor authentication issue and another one is regarding yahoo mail connection. Please feel free to check those new articles under the Troubleshooting area. We hope those updates will help you to configure the settings and let Spamdrain keep your Inbox clean as always.

As usual, you can find other useful information at our help center. Please do not hesitate to contact our support here support@spamdrain.com in case you have any further questions.

Have a nice day and your inbox clean from Spam  🙂

Beta of our new webapp released

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Today we have the pleasure to announce that we’ve released a public beta of the new webapp we’ve been working on for the past months. So far you will be able to access your filtered messages – search, report, release and view them. The next weeks we’ll make sure to unlock rest of the functionality such as settings, account info and our brand new whitelist blacklist management just as we have in the mobile apps.

First time you access the new interface you’ll be presented a tutorial that you don’t want to miss so make sure you watch the entire show.

Our spamster is welcoming you to the new look

Our spamster is welcoming you to the new look

Report and release by clicking the classification icon to the left.

Report and release by clicking the classification icon to the left.

Access old UI

And don’t worry if you feel lost. For some time we will provide a link to easily get back to the old webapp, but it will phased out later this year.

Skärmavbild 2015-04-24 kl. 10.38.24

About Spamdrain

SpamDrain is a anti-spam cloud service that uses artificial intelligence to filter out spam, newsletters, phishing and virus emails. We bring peace of mind to your inbox.

New iOS and Android apps published

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Today we have the pleasure to announce that both our iOS and Android apps now are available in App Store and Google Play Store. These new apps brings a new look including a new logo and colors. We have also made it easier to sign up, add new addresses and improved the overall navigation in the app.

Another thing we’ve changed is the icons indicating the type of a message as you’ll see in the screenshots below.

A big THANK YOU to all the beta testers who helped us with all the valuable feedback.

We’re now working on finalizing the webapp which will be launched in an open beta in a couple of weeks.

Screenshots

New side menu

New side menu

Change classification of a message

Change classification of a message

New side menu

New side menu

Change class by tapping classification icon

Change class by tapping classification icon

 

Login screen

Login screen

 

Access all your addresses easily and add new ones.

Access all your addresses easily and add new ones.

 

Filter which types of messages you want to see

Filter which types of messages you want to see

About Spamdrain

SpamDrain is a anti-spam cloud service that uses artificial intelligence to filter out spam, newsletters, phishing and virus emails. We bring peace of mind to your inbox.

New web site launched and still open spots for beta testing apps

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We are slowly rolling out our new design which now is available at spamdrain.com. We are doing the changes gradually so for a couple of weeks you may see a mix of old design and new one. So please bare with us.

When you sign in you will still see the old web app but we are working on publishing a beta version of that in a week or two.

Final chance to beta test iOS and Android apps

There are still room for more beta testers. Please see our
previous post for info about how to join.

New beta versions of Android and iOS apps published

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Today we have the pleasure to announce we have released the second beta of both our iOS and Android apps. This second beta adds better support for iPad and tablets. We have also fixed some issues and added a tutorial which is displayed first time you start the app.

Please let us know what you think

If you haven’t joined as beta tester yet, please read below for info of how to apply. If you are testing, please let us know what you think – we want to know what’s good and what we can do better. Send your feedback to feedback@spamdrain.net.

Sign up for iOS beta testing

We are using Apple’s Testflight that’s now integrated in their normal app publishing tools. So all you need to do is to send us an email to beta@spamdrain.net and we will send you an invite.
While waiting for the invite, please install the Testflight app from App Store.

Sign up for Android beta testing

Please join our beta tester Google+ group if you haven’t already to get your copy of the new beta once we publish it. When you have joined the group you’ll find instructions of how you “join as a tester”. After that you will automatically receive the beta as an ordinary update.

What about the webapp?

Please be patient :-). We are also working on a complete rewrite of our web interface, and will soon publish a beta version of that as well.

About SpamDrain

SpamDrain is a anti-spam cloud service that uses artificial intelligence to filter out spam, newsletters, phishing and virus emails. We bring peace of mind to your inbox.