Case Study - RhinoSoft.com

Background: RhinoSoft.com uses email as a primary form of communication with customers and partners.

Problem: Because we've been using email for so long, many of our email addresses have been added to spammer's mailing lists and most of our email accounts receive hundreds of email messages each day. We've used spam filters to filter most of the messages, however this method still required us to spend time verifying that the spam checker didn't mistake real email messages for spam. Even with spam filtering in place, the spammers have learned how to bypass these filters allowing many more messages to arrive undetected as spam.

Solution: Install Zaep for all company email. Spam caused us to become very unproductive as we were always getting interrupted by our email client notifying us of new email that was most likely going to be spam. This spam also had to be reviewed in our spam folders to verify the results of the filter. It got to be so bad that I decided to develop our own challenge/response email system.

When unsolicited email arrives, the sender is asked to visit a web site to confirm the message. When the sender has met the challenge, all pending messages from that sender arrive at the email client's inbox.

We don't want email originating from our web-based support and sales forms to be challenged, so we added the IP address of our web server to the approved IP address list. Customers using our web-based forms are never sent a challenge message because the origin of the message is a trusted IP address.

Benefits: Increased Productivity - When I first started in this business, an email message was "real". I knew it had some value to me and was important to the sender. Throughout my Internet career, I've left my email client running in the background so I'm notified of new messages. With the absolute flood of email over the past several years I was being interrupted all of the time. Now with Zaep in place, when I receive a message it IS real! It's amazing to me, both personally and professionally.

Virus Prevention - As a side benefit, I've learned that Zaep also keeps away most viruses! Zaep is not an anti-virus solution, however it has stopped almost all of those dangerous messages from arriving in our inboxes.

Summary: When I started writing Zaep, I was frustrated with the interruptions caused by spam. I was frustrated with the never-ending task of attempting to improve our spam filter. I was frustrated with the fact that a majority of the email messages we were receiving were spam. Since first using Zaep, just days after starting development, I have not received a single spam message. And if I had, I could quickly use my web browser to black list the sender.