Yahoo is continuing to boost its tools for fighting
unsolicited e-mail.
To continue helping its users, the provider of internet content
and services is adding five new products to its anti-spam arsenal,
including the scanning of every attachment arriving or leaving a
user's inbox to check for viruses.
While the other four enhancements are standard, the decision to
scan all incoming and outgoing attachments stands out as
particularly interesting because so many viruses are spread that
way, said Jim Nail, a Forrester Research senior analyst.
"The biggest addition here is the scanning of attachments for
viruses. This is something consumers will get a ton of value out
of," Nail said.
The service, which is available to all Yahoo e-mail users, scans
all attachments for viruses, blocking infected attachments from
being downloaded, sent or forwarded.
Users who subscribe to the Yahoo Mail Plus service, which starts
at $29.99 (£17.94) per year, get the additional option of scrubbing
the attachment to remove the virus.
Previously, Yahoo left it up to its mail users to decide whether
they wanted their attachments scanned, said Miles Libbey, Yahoo's
antispam product manager.
Users could bypass scanning attachments to accelerate mail
downloading for example. However, given the serious consequences of
recent virus attacks, the company decided to scan all attachments,
he said.
The four antispam enhancements include:
AddressGuard, a feature which gives Yahoo Mail
Plus users disposable e-mail aliases they can use instead of their
real e-mail address.
For example, a user might want to use an alias when conducting
an online transaction or subscribing to an online group. If the
alias then falls into a spammer's hands, the user can simply ditch
this disposable address.
A user can have up to 500 e-mail aliases in use simultaneously.
E-mail sent to these addresses arrives in the user's inbox. This is
not available to users of Yahoo's free e-mail service.
SpamGuard Plus, an enhancement to Yahoo's
proprietary SpamGuard spam filter. SpamGuard Plus lets users
customise the general SpamGuard filter based on their usage and
preferences. This is only available to Yahoo Mail Plus users.
Message Views, which lets users sort e-mail
sent by people listed in their personal address book and by unknown
senders.
This could help a user prioritise which messages he reads and
replies to first, the logic being he would want to deal first with
e-mail from senders he knows.
This is available to all users of Yahoo's e-mail service.
AntiSpam resource centre, a section of Yahoo's
website network with information, tips and best practices on
dealing with spam.
Yahoo decided to invest in this resource center because it has
found out through surveys that many users still ignore the basics
of how to protect themselves from spam, such as not replying to
unsolicited e-mail messages. All Yahoo mail users have access to
this resource centre.
All enhancements apart from Message Views are available
immediately. Message Views will be rolled out between next week and
November.
Juan Carlos Perez writes for IDG News Service