MonsterMail launches e-mail filtering service

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By Tom Mainelli

(IDG) -- Would you pay a little over $2 monthly to eliminate e-mail spam from your in-box?

MonsterMail thinks you will, and has launched an e-mail filtering and forwarding service it claims will keep junk messages and viruses at bay. The price is $6.95 every three months--and needing to train your correspondents to write to you at a new MonsterMail address.

"Most people don't want to deal with it," he says, noting that even technically savvy PC users often have trouble figuring out how to use filtering software. "We're trying to offer the simplest, strongest solution out there."

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Filtering From Clouds

"The best place to do filtering is at the network level. It's above your multiple in-boxes," Hren says. To accomplish this, when you sign up for the service you have to choose a new MonsterMail e-mail address, which will become your primary e-mail address.

But you don't have to check yet another in-box, he says. MonsterMail's service feeds messages into the existing in-box or in-boxes of your choice.

So, when somebody sends a message to your MonsterMail address, the service first scans it for viruses. The company uses McAfee's virus software, and updates its virus definitions every 15 minutes, Hren adds. If the service finds a virus, it attempts to clean and repair the infected message. If it can't save the file, it deletes it and alerts you by e-mail.

After examining a message for viruses, the service examines its originating address. It forwards to you the messages from addresses you've approved, it deletes those you've listed as bad, and it logs and stores the rest.

The service sends you a copy of this log as often as you want (immediately, daily, or weekly). You can sort through the messages, deciding which incoming addresses to add to your "keep" and "block" lists. You can make these changes through the Web site, or by returning the log message.

It is a very simple, but tough, system, Hren says. "The only way to get through to our customers is to be on their list."

The system is also helpful for parents who want to remotely monitor e-mail messages to their kids' e-mail accounts, he says.

Starting Over

One thing to note about MonsterMail: If spammers are already inundating your current e-mail account, signing on with the service won't slow that deluge.

"If you have a serious spam problem on one of your existing accounts, you'd have to kill that account. Get a clean one and start with us," Hren says.

Of course, switching over to a new e-mail address is a pain, Hren says. MonsterMail knows this, and tries to make the task easier by letting you upload your current address book and automatically sending out announcements to your friends, family, and colleagues.

And once you've established your MonsterMail account, you can keep it forever, he says. Even if you change your underlying e-mail accounts, your ISP, your job, or whatever, your MonsterMail address will remain the same, he explains.

And the 2-year-old company plans to stick around for the long haul, he says. While it is not yet profitable, he expects it will be within six months. Hren says the company can make money regardless of whether it has a small or large number of subscribers. "Our business model makes sense," Hren adds. "We don't have some wacky model that you don't understand."