End User I love cynicism. It shows exactly how short-sighted point of views are sometimes. Everything you just said is true, (in your own words)
as it is now, or
how it works today.
As we both so duly agreed on, today, anyone can send you a message. The short-sighted part where you said until you ban them. Email today doesn't have that capability.
The difference between your meaning of ban and mine are completely different. Yours, like everyone else (most everyone else), means that you don't get any messages from that person - you have no way of blocking that person.
As someone stated about SitePM, we stop a spammer from clicking send on their computer. That is banned. What we have today is filtering the message. A blocked user can still send a message whether you get it or not.
That is fact because the system is built to respond to messages that don't pass the algorithms. They have to scan the entire message and if it passes deliver it anyway. There are 2 possibilities after that. Send it to a spam folder or trash it.
The point is, the sender hasn't been banned. They can still send all day long. So yes, what you said is true, even with the changing of names, spellings, etc. (that is to get around the algorithms).
We laugh in the IT room because people only see it in one way - the same way you described it - as it is today. There is no thinking about a better way and any change is often met with resistance and cynicism.
Email is like a vault where anyone can come inside and the best security we have is inside the vault filtering people out. It's a system without trust and accountability and as long as it remains that way there will always be spam and billions of dollars wasted trying to prevent it and it will always fail because it has no trust.
Now, think big for a second to my definition of ban. Email today focusses on the message. It was designed to answer the question, what is spam?
SitePM changed the focus to answer the question, who is a spammer?
The only way to do that is to build a system with trust. Every IT system in the world is built on trust. We've got pass protection, credentials, and so on. Why doesn't email?
We say who can and cannot access our homes, our computers, our networks, our place of work and the list goes on and on, yet we leave email with a big gaping hole where anyone can use it.
In stead of matching message headers and content to an algorithm to see if it's spam and if it is block or filter, SitePM doesn't even let the message get sent. The sender gets "you have been blocked."
Email today let's you send attachments to anyone at anytime as well. With SitePM, nobody can send you an attachment unless they have your explicit permission. SecureKey Verification is like a pin number that a sender must use in order to send you a file. No more viruses, keylogger, or any malware from unknown sources.
That's what trust is all about. Of the beta testers there are fourteen midsize companies who created accounts for their employees and they all report less bottlenecks and a faster network because there is significantly less trash data floating around.
Users are spending more time getting the important messages instead of surfing through a spam folder looking for an important message that might have been identified as spam. No more allow sender lists needed.
That's time saved, money saved, and a more secure system - that's increased productivity and higher profits. The day email does that I'll pack up SitePM myself.
The law has changed regarding the use of email for discovery in court cases. In some states email is not allowed to be used as evidence. The new proposed changes reguired for evidence is that email must be managed and verifiable.
Email today anyone can fake an email, send an email from anywhere, even make it look like it came from someone else. SitePM is database driven with redundancy and can be use as evidence in a courtroom. That came from two attourneys and a judge who are now using the system to deal with their clients.
The head of an IT company in Raleigh, NC put it in writing for me, "your system is so far ahead of Exhange that it isn't funny."
A few years ago there was a massive DDOS (denial of service) attack that shut down communications for several hours and service altogether for a few days. DDOS attacks are emerging as one of the greatest threats to the Internet and DNS is one of the largest targets. Stop DNS and you have no domain names resolving to IP addresses.
It may sound dumb except it's already been happening. Hackers are attacking POPS and Registratar's that house the DNS tables that hold the records. They can in fact stop the Internet by breaking the domain name service.
SitePM uses a technology we designed called Mock DNS. The idea is like a BDC for messaging. When the primary goes down, you bring up the second and messaging continues uninterrupted.
It's a private routing system. It's a great defense strategy for corporations, government, the military...
Did you ever stop to think what would happen if terrorism included not just biological, chemical or nuclear, but IT terrorism as well? Sure, right now people are blowing up stuff, killing people, etc. but you would cripple countries if communications were cut off.
SitePM allows communication to continue in the face of threats like DDOS attacks. That's not just security, but national security. That's what I mean by thinking big vs being short sighted.
There are so many more features coming out for SitePM that it's not even funny.
At the risk of sounding rude, which is unintentional, me and my team have spent the past two years developing this system before it first went live. I can assure that with the caliber of the people I work with, if the project was as you just said it wouldn't have gotten off the ground.
I didn't come here to ask for permission to build the system, nor did I ask for a critique of the system, though I do really appreciate your insight and comments.
You said you appreciate what I'm trying to do, but... I'm going to have to cut you off there. I'm not trying to do anything. It's already done. SitePM is live and in use and I have the backing of several large companies that are both using the system and funding the project, including Microsoft.
With some changes coming up in the next few months we are planning a serious usage boost - as much as 250,000 users. I came to ask for beta testers and the feedback of the beta testers to build information for the next patch to the system - features, updates, etc.
I still need several people to be beta testers and the free offer is still on the table if anyone is interested.
http://business.techdex.net/cgi-bin/sitepm_free.cgi