The spam problem can be broken down into several distinct categories of email transactions. Different methods are required to fight spam in each transaction category. The categories are:

1. Mail transactions between friends. When mail is sent between parties who know one another's addresses, a "whitelist" containing the friend's address can be used to validate the mail. Mail from any address on the whitelist is presumed to be valid. This method is unambiguous.
2. Sending mail to or receiving mail from a stranger. If you send mail to a stranger you risk having your message discarded as spam. A useful technique here is the challenge/response system, whereby your software sends a "challenge" email to the stranger's return address. The challenge is linked to a web page which requires a human action such as typing in a number. When the challenge is met, your software then permits mail from that sender to be validated and received.
3. Receiving mail from an automated source. This is the hardest one because automated mailings include both mail you want, such as newsletters, purchase confirmations, brokerage statements, etc., and mail you don't want, i.e., spam. You can use a whitelist to permit this mail if you know the source, such as a newsletter sender's address. But for mail from a source address you don't know in advance, such as a purchase confirmation, the whitelist doesn't work. For this you really need a system of stamps that will validate the received mail, which is where UseBestMail shines.

UseBestMail addresses all the categories above and avoids some of the pitfalls and limitations of other anti-spam techniques. The main limitation of current anti-spam software is the problem of false positives. A false positive occurs when a message you want to receive is treated as spam. The mirror image of this is when spam gets through. Topping the list of techniques subject to this kind of ambiguity are so-called spam filters. These are based on the theory that software can distinguish spam from legitimate messages based on automated analysis of the content -- essentially censoring the mail by robot. Of course, spammers are smarter than robots, so they find ways to foil the filters and this technology is in a perpetual state of flux.

To address the limitations of automated filtering some providers have implemented a voting system, whereby email users who receive spam "vote" by various means to identify these messages (or sources) as spam. Then, presumably, others can rely on these votes to reject the offending messages. This is OK providing that you are willing to rely on the judgment of others to censor your mail. A newsletter publisher told us that some "voters" are using this method as a lazy way to unsubscribe from the newsletter, thus "unsubscribing" a lot of other users as well.

UseBestMail avoids use of ambiguous methods. Thus there are neither false positives nor false negatives. Good mail is good mail, spam is junk. Here's how it works:

• Stamped Mail is Good Mail. All mail sent with UseBestMail has a stamp attached to it. This stamp guarantees that the mail was sent by a legitimate mailer, not an automated spammer. When everyone uses UseBestMail stamped messages there will be no need for any other technique, and spam will disappear completely. If you and all your correspondents UseBestMail you will be communicating in a spam-free channel -- no ambiguity there.
• A White List is Unambiguous. Of course, you may have friends who don't or can't UseBestMail. For those we've provided a whitelist. A whitelist is a list of email addresses from which you are willing to receive mail, whether stamped or not. Any mail address you send mail to is presumed to be someone who you wouldn't mind receiving mail back from, so they are automatically added to your whitelist. Additionally, you can manually add any address to your whitelist, so this takes care of automated mail you want, such as newsletters and financial statements.
• Challenge/Response for Mail from Strangers. You will, from time to time, receive wanted mail from strangers. Before this mail is delivered to your inbox, the sender is asked via return email to perform a simple task, the challenge. This consists of typing a few numbers, a task that a person can easily perform but a machine can't easily do. Once the sender responds to this challenge, your whitelist is automatically and transparently updated with the sender's address and his message is received.
• Receipt of Automated Mail from Strangers. Until all legitimate mailers UseBestMail you'll want to periodically inspect the list of challenged emails that is maintained by UseBestMail. If you see a message for which you don't expect the challenge to be successfully answered, as for example, the purchase confirmation from a web based vendor, or you just don't want to wait for a successful response to the challenge, you can force the message into the whitelist and hence to your inbox by the click of your mouse.

UseBestMail combines all of the unambiguous techniques, above, to provide you with spam-free email right from the first day you install it. As your whitelist grows and most importantly, as more people participate in UseBestMail, not only will your management task shrink, but the amount of spam on the internet will decline. Stamped mail is not economical for spammers.

For business users we provide a UseBestMail product that works with the mail server to provide stamped mail outgoing and block or redirect non-stamped mail incoming. (This system is demonstrated by our mailbox service -- next paragraph.)

Even those using Apple or Linux computers or cell phones or Blackberry devices can enjoy UseBestMail through our subscriptions mailbox service. This provides a stamped email account accessible through a web interface or via SMTP/POP. Nobody is left out.

So try UseBestMail for yourself. It's easy, it's positive, and it stops spam. What more could you want?