What is ChoiceMail
One?
What is ChoiceMail One? |
| Do I need to get a new email account
to use ChoiceMail One? No - unlike many other systems, ChoiceMail One works with your own email accounts - nor do you have to forward your email to any central service for examination. Your email remains private and on your computer. |
| Why does ChoiceMail One not integrate
into Outlook? This was a deliberate decision on our part. One reason was so that ChoiceMail could work with ANY email client (why lose your investment in ChoiceMail just because you've found a better email client?) but the main reason is because we think that spam shouldn't be allowed anywhere near your email application. ChoiceMail One can open your email application automatically when there's legitimate email to be read. It's also possible to safely preview your mail within ChoiceMail One without triggering a virus or sending information back to a webserver or spammer. An integrated blocking system using your email application would not provide this protection. It also means you don't HAVE to leave your email application running all the time and being interrupted. When your email program runs, it's because there's legitimate mail waiting for you. |
How many email accounts does ChoiceMail
One support?
|
| What languages are supported by ChoiceMail
One? The ChoiceMail One user interface itself is in English. However, you can customize the registration messages sent out by ChoiceMail One so that they are in your own language (Roman fonts only). The registration messages that unknown senders see are also available in several languages. |
| What if my ISP offers spam blocking? A number of companies offer centralized spam filtering service. We don't believe that centralized filtering systems (or indeed client-based filtering systems) are adequate and suggest that you disable that option if it's offered to you. Then depend on ChoiceMail One to manage your spam. |
| Some senders don't
bother to fill in the permission form.
Will I still get their mail? That's up to you. Mail is held temporarily by ChoiceMail until someone registers and you can always choose to review held-up mail manually (ChoiceMail makes it easy to do that quickly). On the other hand, many people take the position that if someone doesn't want to bother to fill in the form (a simple brief one-time effort for anyone not already on your whitelist), then you probably don't need to see their mail anyway. After all, if the sender doesn't consider their message to be important enough that they need to make sure you read it, why should you consider it worth reading! |
Can I try ChoiceMail
before I buy it? |
| Why does junk
email exist? The downside of course
is that the end-user is bombarded with junk and has to spend
a significant amount of time weeding out real mail from junk. |
| Why is junk
email a problem for email users?
|
Does ChoiceMail
One stop the new Messenger popup spam?
|
| What is the
goal of ChoiceMail? The secondary goal is to reduce significantly
the effort you must go through to filter email. ChoiceMail does
this by moving the processing costs from you back to the sender. |
What is the
Safe Message Previewer? |
| Does
ChoiceMail configure my email application for me? ChoiceMail can configure Outlook Express (versions 5 and later), Eudora (versions 4 and later) and Outlook 98 and later, automatically. If you are using other email applications, such as Netscape, Mozilla, or the Bat, you will have to configure ChoiceMail and your other email application manually. Step by step instructions for configuring Outlook 2000 manually are available here. |
| Can I use ChoiceMail
with MSN? Yes. As of version 1.5, ChoiceMail can retrieve email from MSN and make it available through a standard email application, such as Outlook Express. |
| How about AOL? Yes. As of version 1.5, ChoiceMail can retrieve email from AOL and make it available through a standard email application, such as Outlook Express. Note that you do NOT use your AOL email system with ChoiceMail. Instead you allow ChoiceMail to retrieve email from the AOL system and then you read your email with a standard email application such as Outlook Express. Although this may require a minor learning curve, we know that AOL users will find the benefit of using standard email applications to be well worth the effort. Please click here for more information about using ChoiceMail with AOL. |
| What about web-based
email? As of version 1.5, ChoiceMail also supports Yahoo and Hotmail. |
| Does ChoiceMail
support Microsoft Exchange and IMAP? ChoiceMail One no longer provides official IMAP supports. If you are using Microsoft Exchange, then you will need to use ChoiceMail Enterprise. Click here for more information about ChoiceMail Enterprise. |
| What happens
when I reject a senders message. Are they notified? If so, how? You don't reject a sender's message. You reject a sender! It's up to you whether they get notified or not. |
| Is a registration
message always sent out? ChoiceMail uses several mechanisms to determine whether it should send a registration message out or not. Your whitelist and blacklists are examined, as are your permission rules. Various parts of the message headers are also examined automatically. The icon associated with each sender will indicate whether a registration message was sent automatically. As of version 1.4, you can also hold up the registration process temporarily if you wish to examine new messages manually. When you're done, you can decide to allow ChoiceMail to send registration requests for messages that you have not processed. |
| If ChoiceMail
is not active I assume that it will not filter messages? Not only must it be on, but if it is not on, your email application won't work at all while it is configured to go through ChoiceMail. You can however disable ChoiceMail from actually examining emails and just let them all through. |
| You said
I don't have to review the list of new senders, just ignore
them. What if there is a message I want to accept from someone
who hasn't requested approval, say from an automated newsletter
sender or from a merchant? A better solution is to use our virtual email address feature. It's generally not necessary to explicitly
REJECT or DELETE senders though - they will just go away by
themselves after a while. |
| If someone is rejected,
the next time they send a message does it show up on the new senders
list? If I decide to review the new senders list everyday, am
I going to see them each time they send a message? If you REJECT someone, you will NEVER see them again - they will NOT show up on the new senders list. |
| I am hesitant
not to review new senders list as there may be something there
that I do want. If I do not delete messages from this list it
is going to grow larger and larger and become difficult to scan.
Is there a "delete all messages" button? If you really want to, you can just
select all the new senders and delete them in one go by pressing
the DELETE key. |
| If I am not online,
does a sender get the ChoiceMail message anyway at the time they
send it or later when I go online? If you are not online, they will not get the message until you are online so that ChoiceMail can work. |
| What is the
difference between rejecting a sender and deleting a sender in
the unknown sender list? If you REJECT a sender, all future emails from that sender just silently disappear. ChoiceMail remembers that that sender is rejected. However, if you DELETE a sender, they are 100% removed from your lists so that if they send another message, they will get a new registration request (because they look like a new sender again) |
| What does it mean
when the ChoiceMail icon in my system tray is blinking green? It means that some emails have arrived that have been allowed through by ChoiceMail and so are available to be loaded into your email program. |
| Can ChoiceMail
handle newsletters and listbots? Yes - typically you will allow messages from the domain of these senders or you can create a rule to determine its legitimate based on its content. |
| How does ChoiceMail
move the cost back to the sender? ChoiceMail forces unknown senders to go through a manual web-based registration process where they must explain briefly why they want to contact you. Until a sender takes this step, his or her email messages simply do not reach you. This process by itself is sufficient to block almost all junk email immediately. |
| How does ChoiceMail
actually work? ChoiceMail sits in between your standard email client and the mail server. It downloads all emails on your behalf and processes them to determine which emails are allowed to reach your email client. If it does not recognise the sender, it automatically sends him or her a request to register. This by itself immediately blocks almost all junk emails from reaching your system. |
| What
about senders that I already know? Do they have to register? That's up to you. ChoiceMail can import email addresses from your contact lists (how) so that they are automatically registered. However, we encourage you to ensure that your contact lists are up to date. Note: at this time, address books cannot be imported automatically from AOL or other web-based email systems. |
| What operating
system must I be running to be able to use ChoiceMail? ChoiceMail has been tested on Microsoft Windows NT4, W2K and XP. It has also been tested on Windows ME and Windows 98SE. It has not been tested rigorously (and is not officially supported) on older versions of Windows 9x. We are told that it may work on Windows 9x if you have installed Internet Explorer 4.x or higher but we cannot guarantee this. At this time, ChoiceMail does not run on any other platform. |
| How
is ChoiceMail different from other junk blocking services? To learn how you can use ChoiceMail
in your corporation, please contact
sales@digiportal.com.
|
| Can I stop incoming
junk mail that looks like it's coming from me? |
| I am behind
a firewall. Will ChoiceMail work? As long as you can access your SMTP and POP servers you should be fine. |
| Does ChoiceMail
send any information back to DigiPortal? ChoiceMail may contact our servers from time to time to confirm that you are a valid user but no information is saved - we do not monitor your usage of the product. Our servers are also used briefly as part of the registration process but again that information is not saved for any other purpose. ChoiceMail does not transmit and we do not collect any personal information. In particular, your email does NOT go through our servers. ChoiceMail itself does not send cookies or referral headers to our servers. Please see our privacy policy for more information about our approach to privacy in general. |
What
is the Extended Download Service? |
What
is the Federal Government doing to stop spam? |
