I just added a link to Habeas there on the left. They use a unique approach to guarantee that your email makes it through spam filters. If you agree not to spam, you can license their poem. You put this in your mail headers. Many spam filters are configured to recognize the Habeas poem, so they let the email pass through. That’s great, you say, but can’t anyone just put the poem in their email headers to get it past filters? That’s where Habeas’ power lies. Their poem is a copyrighted work. If you use it against their licensing terms, they sue you under existing and proven copyright laws for devaluing their work. No worries about how judges will interpret the technical side of things, or if they’ll even have any clue about it. Spamming is stopped via existing, proven, understood laws. As you can see, it’s a unique way to handle the issue, and it works.
Businesses and email providers can sign up to have all of their outgoing mail tagged with the headers by having their users agree to the Habeas terms. Individuals can get a personal license for free. Once you do that, you can configure your mail client or mail server to embed the headers in each email you send. You can also download a proxy for Windows. Your mail client sends all mail to the proxy and the proxy sends it to the actual mail server after embedding the headers.
A new setting has been added to Mozilla (including Thunderbird) to embed custom headers in each email. The easiest way to add the proper settings is to install chromEdit. Once you’ve got that installed, just pick Edit User Files on your Tools menu, click on the user.js tab, and add the following:
// Add Habeas headers to outgoing mail user_pref("mail.identity.id1.headers","habeas1,habeas2,habeas3,habeas4,habeas5,habeas6,habeas7,habeas8,habeas9"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas1", "X-Habeas-SWE-1: winter into spring"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas2", "X-Habeas-SWE-2: brightly anticipated"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas3", "X-Habeas-SWE-3: like Habeas SWE(tm)"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas4", "X-Habeas-SWE-4: Copyright 2002 Habeas (tm)"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas5", "X-Habeas-SWE-5: Sender Warranted Email (SWE) (tm). The sender of this"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas6", "X-Habeas-SWE-6: email in exchange for a license for this Habeas"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas7", "X-Habeas-SWE-7: warrant mark warrants that this is a Habeas Compliant"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas8", "X-Habeas-SWE-8: Message (HCM) and not spam. Please report use of this"); user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.habeas9", "X-Habeas-SWE-9: mark in spam to <http://www.habeas.com/report/>.");
Click Save and that’s it. Mozilla will now add those lines to every outgoing mail automatically. The setting is per-account, so if you have multiple email accounts you’ll need to add a copy of that for each account, but changing id1 to the proper id# corresponding to the mail account. With this tidbit of code and taking the time to fill out the app linked above, you’ll be guaranteeing that your legitimate mail makes it through just about every mail filter out there.
I don’t know anything about Habeas’ business licensing, but the personal one is free, so I figure it can only help. Many common filters already recognize the Habeas poem, and Habeas seems to be doing a good job of enforcing its use (which keeps it worthwhile).