MailBlocks

Last updated
MailBlocks
TypeSubsidiary of AOL
Founded United States
Headquarters United States

MailBlocks is an e-mail hosting service company based in the United States, originally established by Phil Goldman in 2002. It was acquired by AOL on August 3, 2004. [1]

Contents

Service

Mailblocks offered free challenge-response spam filtering web email service and an IMAP interface as a revenue service. [2]

Patent Troll Controversy

Mailblocks did not invent challenge response to block spam. Instead, they purchased the rights to two patents related to challenge response: patents US6199102 and US6112227. Mailblocks then proceeded to patent troll several other companies before releasing any product of their own. Companies sued included Spam Arrest, DigiPortal, MailFrontier, and Earthlink. [3] It is worth noting that challenge response was a well known technique for fighting personal spam and mailing list spam for years before the two patents were applied for. For example, David Skoll described it in detail in a post to a public forum on November 15, 1996.

Related Research Articles

AOL American web portal and online service provider

AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo Inc.

Spamming Unsolicited electronic messages, especially advertisements

Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.

Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam.

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 American law to regulate bulk e-mail

The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 is a law passed in 2003 establishing the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail. The law requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce its provisions. Introduced by Republican Conrad Burns, the act passed both the House and Senate during the 108th United States Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush in December of 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phishing</span> Attempt to trick a person into revealing information

Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious software on the victim's infrastructure like ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim is navigating the site, and transverse any additional security boundaries with the victim. As of 2020, phishing is by far the most common attack performed by cybercriminals, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Centre recording over twice as many incidents of phishing than any other type of computer crime.

Email spam Unsolicited electronic advertising by e-mail

Email spam, also referred to as junk email or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming).

Hashcash is a proof-of-work system used to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks, and more recently has become known for its use in bitcoin as part of the mining algorithm. Hashcash was proposed in 1997 by Adam Back and described more formally in Back's 2002 paper "Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure".

Sanford 'Spamford' Wallace is an Internet spammer. He initially sent junk faxes before coming to notoriety in 1997, promoting himself as the original "Spam King". Wallace's prolific spamming has resulted in encounters with the United States government, anti-spam activists, and large corporations such as Facebook and MySpace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AOL Mail</span> Free web-based email service provided by AOL

AOL Mail is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a division of Yahoo.

The Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) is an organization that provides anti-spam support by maintaining a DNSBL. They provide five black lists, categorising why an address or an IP block is listed:

Randall Boe is the former General Counsel for AOL and has been involved in many notable cases regarding internet law. He was named the commissioner of the Arena Football League in March 2018. He was born in Ohio and grew up in Iowa City, Iowa. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison and graduated in 1983 with majors in political science and economics. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987. After graduation, he went to work at Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn in Washington, D.C. While at Arent Fox, Boe specialized in complex litigation and tried a wide variety of matters, including antitrust cases, white collar criminal matters and product liability matters.

Tumbleweed Communications Corp. provided secure messaging and secure file transfer solutions for enterprise and government customers. Tumbleweed Communications merged with Axway in 2008.

Geobytes is a global company specializing in geolocation and anti-spam software. Geobytes was incorporated in the State of Delaware, USA in 1999 making it one of the oldest companies in the online geolocation industry.

Microsoft has been involved in numerous high-profile legal matters that involved litigation over the history of the company, including cases against the United States, the European Union, and competitors.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States.

The history of email spam reaches back to the mid-1990s when commercial use of the internet first became possible - and marketers and publicists began to test what was possible.

Boxbe is a free service that prioritizes and screens spam in personal email. Users can select which email they want to receive, and which email goes to spam. It presents a challenge to the sender that requires a human response. Bulk anonymous data is provided to their parent company, which provides an email validation and tracking service.

EarthLink is an American Internet service provider.

Article One Partners (AOP) is an online prior art search and intellectual property research crowdsourcing community. AOP was acquired by RWS Group in October 2017 and the AOP Connect crowdsourcing platform is now part of the IP Research group within RWS. RWS IP Research provides crowdsourced prior-art-search services by utilizing an online research community. The company's President stated that, as of June 30, 2018, AOP comprises "more than 40,000 in over 170 countries."

<i>America Online, Inc. v. IMS</i>

America Online, Inc. v. IMS, 24 F. Supp. 2d 548 was one of a series of legal battles America Online launched against junk e-mail. In this case, the court held that defendants' unauthorized mailing of unsolicited bulk e-mail constituted a trespass to chattels under Virginia state law.

References

  1. "America Online, Inc. Announces Acquisition of Mailblocks, Inc". AOL. 2004-08-03. Retrieved 2008-04-15.
  2. "Mailblocks review" . Retrieved 2009-08-03.
  3. "MailBlocks sues Earthlink over Anti-Spam Tech - Slashdot".