Boxbe Blog

In an earlier post, I mentioned a spammer who was phishing getting convicted and facing up to a 101 years in prison as a result. But what exactly is phishing?

Photo by Flickr user thermodynamix

Wikipedia defines phishing as

“a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message, although phone contact has been used as well. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures.”

In a nutshell, phishing is something criminals do to trick people into giving them sensitive information. The stolen information is then used by the criminal for further illicit activities.

Boxbe and phishing

So, what does Boxbe do about phishing? First, the only email that you receive when using Boxbe is from senders that you have approved, have passed a human test or have paid a fee. Second, we use two emerging industry standards, SPF and DomainKeys to increase the likelihood that the sender isn’t spoofing or faking their email address.

Is it a 100% solution? No. Unfortunately, we can’t guard against all forms of social engineering or deception. What we can do is guard against emails from entering your inbox that make false claims as to their point of origin. The rest is up to you.

Learn more about phishing

We suggest that everyone educate themselves against phishing. Here are some great places to learn more about phishing:

• Microsoft – Recognizing phishing scams and fraudulent emails
• Tips from Fraud.org
• Paypal Security Center
• CNET – How to avoid phishing scams

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about all the features Boxbe has to offer, but today we’ll start with the public forwarding address.

Public Forwarding Address

Your Boxbe public forwarding address is a protected email address. A message sent to your public forwarding address is sent to your real inbox only if the sender:

1. is pre-approved or “whitelisted” by you,
2. passes a test, or
3. pays a fee.

You can share or publish your public forwarding address online without concern because of this protection. The forwarding email address is very handy if you own a blog, a MySpace, Bebo, or YouTube account and would like people to be able to reach you outside those accounts.

Email on Steroids

Since most people have existing email addresses at both home and work or school, you might be asking yourself, why do I need another email address? A Boxbe address isn’t meant to replace those addresses. It’s meant to enhance them.

Personally, I’d never put my Yahoo! or Gmail email address on the internet as it is likely to attract email that I don’t want. Boxbe’s public forwarding address provides a way for me to post my email address anywhere on the internet and not worry about unwanted email.

I use my Boxbe address when posting in online discussion groups or communities, posting to my blog or commenting on someone else’s. I also use my Boxbe address on MySpace and basically anywhere I want people to be able to reach me. Best of all, it’s a forwarding address, so the emails that I want will be delivered to my regular inbox.

Who should use the forwarding email address?

I’ve mentioned a few uses of the forwarding email address for social media sites (blogging, MySpace, discussion boards), but we realize that not everyone participates on those kinds of sites. Boxbe can protect anyone’s email address from unwanted email. Chances are, even if you’ve not posted your email address in a public place, you receive email that you don’t want.

At our core, we’re here to cut down on the email you don’t want to receive and encourage the email that you do want to receive.

Thede and Corbett were interviewed on Thursday last week by the CBS 47 team in Fresno. Check out the video below to get a brief overview of what we do here at Boxbe.

Read more at CBS 47.

We’ve talked a little about at the service, but what about the people that make it tick? For now, I’ll introduce myself and the two founders of the company, Thede and Corbett.

Randy Stewart

I’m Randy Stewart, a Product Manager here at Boxbe, which means I help design features for Boxbe and work with engineers to implement and launch those features. In addition, I’m writing this blog to let people know what’s happening with the service.

Here’s a little about me: I’ve been a product manager at Yahoo! Shopping, Product Manager at Epinions, the community of product review writers and I’ve consulted for numerous early stage internet companies.

Thede and I met back in 1995 while we both worked at Match.com. I was an intern there and he was a lead developer. We’ve been good friends ever since.

Please contact me if you have any questions about Boxbe or have any suggestions for features that you would like to see. You can reach me at randy@boxbe.com

Thede Loder

Hi, I’m Thede Loder, Co-founder and President of Boxbe. I’m excited about Boxbe because I believe we are enabling a revolutionary change in the world of email. I’m also happy to be building things again after a few years studying.

In 2004, I finished a grad program in Computer Science at Michigan. My focus there was on how to modify the rules that govern email so that email would be used more ‘efficiently’. By this I mean the economic notion of efficiency, where both a sender and a recipient of a message get positive value from it, and unwanted messages are discouraged and sent less frequently.

Prior to grad school, I helped build several Internet businesses. The first was Match.com in 1995, where I was the third technical employee. To launch and operate Match.com, we needed an application server, and since they didn’t exist at the time, we had to build one. In 1996, I co-founded Leverage Information Systems with two other engineers to help commercialize the technology. We eventually sold Leverage to Diamond Technology Partners, a strategic consulting firm, which is where I met my fellow co-founder, Corbett Barr.

Corbett Barr

Hi there. I’m Corbett Barr, Boxbe’s other co-founder (and COO). I use Boxbe every day, and I hope we can make it a must-have for you, too. My personal goal is to make a service that truly gives you control over your email communications in a way that is both easy and fun to use.

As Thede mentioned, he and I met at Diamond back in 2000, where I was a technology consultant. I spent about five years there helping big (Fortune 500 sized) clients make better use of technology. In addition to consulting, I’ve also worked as a software developer. My favorite job (by far), however, has been building the Boxbe service over the past year.

Look here for more details about how we plan to make email a better tool for all. If you have any questions or feedback about how we can make Boxbe better, feel free to write me at corbett@boxbe.com

Welcome to Boxbe! As President of the company, I want to officially welcome you to our new blog. This is a place where you’ll hear from many of the Boxbe team members (currently six of us) about what’s going on here, and other things we think you’ll find interesting.

If you’ve been following Boxbe thus far, you probably know that we launched the first beta of www.boxbe.com in November. Since then, we have been working hard to iron out the kinks and bring Boxbe closer to our vision.

What’s our vision exactly? Boxbe is (at its heart) a new kind marketplace. What you trade through Boxbe (or give away, the choice is yours), is “access to yourself”. For your work and personal correspondence, you can let access be free. For others, we help you set a price. Our goal is to give you control over your inbox, and through that, your time.

With your inbox cleaned up, you regain the breathing room to consider new relationships. There are companies who want to reach you, and many you would be happy to hear from. Boxbe helps you hear from the right ones. How? The payment you require is a form of screen. When advertisers are required to reimburse you for your attention, they have more reason to use your preferences to send something interesting.

We’re lining up some exciting advertisers who want to participate. They will become part of the Boxbe marketplace, and share our vision. We know it’s a lofty goal, but every revolution starts somewhere. This is where we can use your help.

In order to engage companies that you would want to hear from (and who would want to pay to reach you), we need a sizable member base. We’ll tell you more about how you can help in upcoming posts, but for starters, spread the word and tell your friends to use Boxbe!

Thanks again for checking us out. Stay tuned for more posts about us and things related. What we’ve launched so far is only the beginning!

Thede
thede@boxbe.com