Filtered Email and Identity Confirmation

Axigen’s Filtered Email and Identity Confirmation© system is a set of user-level Anti-Spam settings, including a version of a challenge / response-based method.

The purpose of the system is to block unwanted messages from reaching Inboxes. It does this by intercepting the emails, passing them through the specific account filter settings, and optionally requiring senders to go through our Identity Confirmation© method.

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How It Works

For every email account, Axigen creates a folder called “Filtered Email”. This folder does a bit more than the Identity Confirmation system itself. Specifically, in your Settings → AntiSpam tab, you’ll have the “Filtered Email” setting. This setting has been extended to give you multiple options.

For messages that arrive to you from email addresses NOT in your address book, you can choose from the following:

  • Discard the message. Deleting the emails, meaning you won’t be receiving those messages at all. The senders are not notified.
  • Discard the message and send a non-delivery notification. Deleting the emails, but the senders will receive a message explaining that their email did not reach its destination.
  • Store the message in the “Filtered Email” folder. Adding the messages to the respective folder, which you can check at any time.
  • Store the message in the “Filtered Email” folder and use Identity Confirmation. Adding messages to the folder, then going through the Identity Confirmation© process.

What Makes Axigen’s Identity Confirmation© Stand Out

There are dedicated tools that you can purchase for this purpose & which you can use on any email address. However, insofar as we’ve seen, there’s no email service provider that does this natively.

Axigen’s Identity Confirmation© challenge / response system works like this:

  • You receive an email from someone outside your Address Book
  • The email goes to your “Filtered Email” folder
  • The sender receives an automated reply detailing how to confirm their identity
  • The reply contains a code in the subject line
  • The sender must then reply with the code, per the instructions
  • This sender confirms their identity
  • The message is automatically moved to your Inbox

User-level Customization

Another advantage of our system is that it’s customizable at the user level.

The Idea Behind Our Challenge / Response System

While a Challenge / Response request can be easily fulfilled by a real person, it can hardly be performed by a spammer. Think of it this way:

  • Legitimate senders have a valid return address, while spammers usually forge a return address. This means that most spammers won't get the challenge, which results in them automatically failing any required action.
  • Spammers often send emails in large quantities and would have to perform Challenge / Response actions in large numbers, while legitimate senders would only have to perform them once for every new email contact, at most.

Even if activated, this mechanism is, of course, not enforced for Whitelisted users or users already in your Address Book.

Note: should you want to receive emails from certain automated mass mailing tools (that, naturally, cannot fulfill the Challenge / Response request), you need to add them to your Address Book or Whitelist prior to activating the Identity Confirmation system.