"I have really enjoyed using bluebottle, and would recommend it to anyone." - Jack L, July 2006

"Thank you very much for providing this excellent service." - Ricardo I, May 2006

"In the BlueBottle fan list, I am on the top."- Ratn R

"I have been very happy with your service and would recommend it to any of my friends." - Alex, June 2006

"A great service! The best free e-mail provider around!"- Connagh

Anti-Spam Protection -
The 7 Steps to Protecting Your Inbox

Before an email message arrives in your inbox, it must pass a series of tests. This "defense in depth" model was adopted by Trusted Delivery in order to protect you against spam, phishing emails, viruses and other Internet threats.

Our users know that we really hate spam; we go to great lengths to protect their inbox. Unlike other email providers who claim they "treat spam seriously", but don’t actually go into detail - we are willing to explain exactly what we do, and why we do it.

The following process outlines the types of tests that an email must pass, in order to get into your email box.

1. Anti-Virus Scanning

Email is first scanned for viruses, worms and Trojan horses. Infected emails are automatically deleted. Our systems automatically check for anti-virus updates each hour, so we can eradicate the very latest threats.

2. Trusted Delivery Email Authentication

Email is then checked using our Trusted Delivery system. Depending on the sender, your email is tagged ‘Trusted’, ‘Not Trusted’ or ‘Not Validated’.

3. DomainKeys

DomainKeys is used to verify the message integrity. While most incoming email fails this test DomainKeys itself is flawed), we still use it to mark emails as passing or failing.

4. SpamAssassin

SpamAssassin is an anti-spam filtering program that is very effective in identifying spam. We use it to perform the following tasks:

• Check the source of an email against public real-time blackhole lists
• Perform SPF (Sender Policy Framework) checks
• Give each email a rating (spam score)
• Check the DomainKeys for a pass / failure
• Check the DomainKeys Identifed Mail (DKIM) for a pass / failure
• Keyword pattern matching. e.g. does the email message contain keywords that are commonly found in spam, such as viagra, cialis etc.
• Bayesian filtering - words or characters that are commonly found in spam

Emails with a rating (spam score) which we consider too high are not accepted by our servers.

5. Bluebottle Blackhole List

We maintain our own real-time blackhole list. This is essentially a list of IP addresses containing details of:

• Servers on the Internet that try (unsuccessfully) to send email through our system
• Known spammers

6. Allowed & Blocked Lists

If the email has made it through all the other tests, it is compared to email addresses in your allowed and blocked lists.

If an email address is listed your blocklist, then its sent to your deleted items folder. Emails sent from someone in your allowed list are automatically moved to your inbox. Emails that are not on any list are sent to your pending folder and automatically go through the challenge and response test.

7. Challenge & Response

An email is sent to the sender of the email asking them to verify their identity. This is as simple as clicking on a link in their email client or web browser. Once the user clicks on the link the email is delivered to your inbox. If a user doesn’t click on the link then the email remains in the pending queue.