Mail Censor

CommonCensor was born from a simple desire to avoid ads and porn on the Internet, and maintain privacy in the process.

The Internet Censor Service exceeded my hopes in it's effectiveness. It's a comforting feeling to be able to open a browser and click a link and not have to fear what might be at the other end. But it did not solve the other big problem I faced online - being the enormous amount of spam I received on my various email accounts. Most of it advertising garbage like Viagra, Thorazine and, of course, porn. Who needs it?

Well, I already had filters in effect for many thousands of domains, spammers and entire net-blocks used for no legitimate purpose. I may as well apply those same filters to my email service. So I did.

What do you get when you combine a world-class ad-, virus- and porn-filtering solution with email?

A better question would be "what don't you get?"

You don't get spam. Well, you don't get much. Since it's not a form of content-filter (for which I would highly recommend the free SpamBayes filter), but a source-filter, it will block the spammers and sources that are known to contain content or ads that would otherwise be blocked by the Internet Censor Service.

Sure, there are other solutions out there, some of them are even being used in conjunction with the Mail Censor - on the server - to provide the best of all worlds, but no solution is a silver bullet. What some people consider spam, others consider content. One of the best reasons for this service, is that it provides you with a 'no installation' solution. You can use whatever software you use now, probably with minimal or no configuration changes, and quite significantly reduce and even potentially eliminate the spam you receive. Even with the significant spam reduction you will experience with this service, I recommend you use a Bayesian filter as well. That will provide you with a second level of protection above and beyond the server-side filtering, and the spam that makes it through will effectively prevent similar spam from affecting you in the future.

Are you ready to sign up, or would you like to see what other people have to say about Common Censor?