MailBlocks

MailBlocks is an e-mail hosting service company based in the United States, originally established by Phil Goldman in 2002. It was acquired by AOL on August 3, 2004.[1]

MailBlocks
TypeSubsidiary of AOL
FoundedUnited States
HeadquartersUnited States

Service

Mailblocks offered free challenge-response spam filtering web email service and an IMAP interface as a revenue service.[2]

Patent Troll Controversy

Mailblocks did not invent challenge response to block spam. Instead, they purchased the rights to two patents related to challenge response: patents US6199102 and US6112227. Mailblocks then proceeded to patent troll several other companies before releasing any product of their own. Companies sued included Spam Arrest, DigiPortal, MailFrontier, and Earthlink.[3] It is worth noting that challenge response was a well known technique for fighting personal spam and mailing list spam for years before the two patents were applied for. For example, David Skoll described it in detail in a post to a public forum on November 15, 1996.

References
  1. "America Online, Inc. Announces Acquisition of Mailblocks, Inc". AOL. 2004-08-03. Retrieved 2008-04-15.
  2. "Mailblocks review". Archived from the original on 2009-08-06. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
  3. "MailBlocks sues Earthlink over Anti-Spam Tech - Slashdot". 20 May 2003.
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