What is MailDeflector?
Mail Deflector, Inc. is a company that provides
services to help you reduce the amount of spam delivered
into your email boxes.
Our Individual program provides access
to our RBL (Real Time Black List) with third party programs like Mail Washer. Our Small Business
program provides access to the RBL or to our mail filtering technologies, or
both. The enterprise version gives you access to our database and our
technologies for your own use, with service resale limitations.
How does the RBL work?
One of our engineers will work with you to help you configure your
email system. After the configuration
is done, the system works quietly in the background typically with no maintenance required by you.
Mail Deflector allows you to stop spam in its tracks by rejecting the initial contact from a previously identified spam
generator. By allowing you personal control over what machines you accept mail from, it provides an extra level of
spam prevention. Your machine gets to refuse spam before it is even delivered!
No maintenance on my part? What does that mean?
We maintain a database of known spammer machines that is updated on a minute by minute basis.
We work on this database to ensure its quality. As new spammers are identified, they are added. If spammers
clean up their act and we are notified and can verify, we remove them. If they spam again to our email traps on
the internet, we add them back into the database.
Is there any maintenance I can do?
Yes. We will give you instructions on using your private database web pages. These pages allow you to maintain
your private blacklist and override the public blacklist.
What do I have to do to sign up?
Go to our sign-up page and complete the form. The you
will re-directed to the confirmation page. Print the page, sign it and fax it back to us. This authorizes us to add your information
to our service, allowing Mail Deflector to help prevent delivery of spam to your system and your users. You will be
contacted by one of our staff to assist you setting the system up.
How much does it cost?
It is free for the first 60 days. Non-Profits are free, with restrictions.
Individual subscription is $24 for 2 years.
The Small Business RBL service is $12.50 a month. The Small Business Mail Filtering
starts at $25 a
month (250 users). The Enterprise service requires negotiation, based upon
technology transfer.
Will it stop all spam? If not, how much spam will it prevent?
Currently, it will stop approximately 50% of spam on your system after about two weeks. As time progresses,
typically more spam is stopped.
How can I tell?
The number of spams delivered to your mailboxes is dropped. Also, examination of mail logs shows a
marked increase in the number of delivery attempt rejections.
Will it stop legitimate emails?
It can, but you can
prevent it from doing so. When you start with MailDeflector, send us a copy
of your current mail logs and we will help you whitelist your legitimate
senders.
Otherwise, if the server that is the source of your legitimate emails has been identified as sending
spam, they can be blocked. You can
override this in your private database. We would also like to be notified so we can remove the server from the
public database, and prevent its re-addition.
Why do you say it will stop spam after two weeks?
It starts reducing spam immediately. However, for better coverage, we evaluate your mail logs and plant spam
bait addresses that forward to special programs that populate the spam database. These addressess are ones
that spammers use to send known spam to you. We also request that you forward received spam to an address we
will give you. This helps stop spammers dead in their tracks.
Do You offer higher quality services that stop more spam?
We will also be offering higher quality, premium services that processes email through our servers first.
The programs on our servers examine each piece of email before sending the email to your server. Identified
spammers are stopped dead. Delivered spam is identified and routed to special mailboxes. This can stop much
higher quantities of spam. These services are currently being evaluated for effectiveness and final pricing.
Will these higher quality services protect me against viruses delivered in email?
The mail filtering
service provides some measure of protection against email delivered viruses. Not
all viruses will be caught, but as we are notified, we add the proper protection.
Would I have to do anything to prevent viruses once I subscribe to the additional service?
No. Viruses would be modified to prevent infection on your machines without you having to do anything. In a
typical situation, a virus file will be renamed to a harmless program name that will not automatically infect a machine.
This "de-fanging" process can be reversed by giving the file back its original name.
How do I become a beta tester of premium services?
You only need to ask. One of our engineers will call you and evaluate your situation. If it is a good match,
we will enroll you in our beta test program. You may be asked for information periodically about the service
to facilitate improvements.
What benefits do I get for being a beta tester?
You get the services you are testing for free during the beta test period, and for a full 6 months after the
beta test is finished.
