Preview: Spamavert version 2

A few weeks ago, we announced that we are working on an updated version of Spamavert. The project has unfortunately been largely abandoned for a long while, but we’ve revived the code and are working very hard on a new version.

First and foremost, we are polishing the rough edges of the existing Spamavert; we are hoping the new version will be easier to work with. We are changing the design somewhat, and we are adding a major new feature.

Please note that the next version of Spamavert is still being developed, and that some of the features might change before release. Therefore, please consider the screenshots below preliminary, lots of things might change.

HTML e-mail

We are adding support for displaying very limited HTML e-mails. Basically we are limiting this to the pure formatting tags, such as <p>, <b>, <strong>, and the like. There will be no <img>-support, nor will we support JavaScript, for obvious reasons.

This will make it easier to read e-mail from those few e-mail clients that do not store plain text in the e-mail they send.

Shorter e-mail lifetime

E-mail sent to Spamavert today has a lifetime of 7 days, before we delete it. In version 2, e-mail will be kept for a maximum of 24 hours. The e-mail will only be stored in memory; meaning that once it is deleted, there will be no way for anyone to recover it unless they have forwarded it to themselves.

Also, we will limit the number of e-mails that can be in a single account at one time. We have not decided exactly what that limit will be. This will encourage people to use more unique addresses, with the added benefit that it will be harder for other people to gain access to your e-mail.

Professional accounts

The largest change will be the professional accounts. When you sign up for a professional account, you can choose your own subdomain of spamavert.com, e.g. mine is vegard.spamavert.com. All e-mail sent to that subdomain belongs to you, and will be unreadable to everyone else.

Even better, you can very easily make certain addresses on your subdomain redirect to your personal e-mail address. You can also automatically block all e-mail to a specific address from ever being received (meaning that Spamavert will see the To-address and simply drop the e-mail on the floor).

Any e-mails that are not auto-forwarded or dropped, will be queued in your Spamavert account, and you can read them and pick which ones to forward when you have the time. These e-mails are stored for a long period before they are deleted.

Professional accounts will have a 30-day free trial, but will have an annual fee once the trial expires. We are not sure what that fee will be just yet.

So, what do you think?

Does this look promising? Are we doing something wrong? Please let us know; we’re called @spamavert on Twitter.

PS! We have not set a release date for this yet. Please let us know via Twitter if you’d like to help us beta-test.