e-mail white list
after reading an article about running only white listed programs on a computer instead of blocking blacklisted ones to improve internet security, i started thinking of doing the same to my e-mail. there are more spam mail coming in each day than legitimate ones so it should be easier (and maybe more efficient?) to filter the mails that are welcome in my inbox based on the e-mail addresses in my address book.
so the filter/rule would more or less go like:
if the sender’s e-mail address is in my address book/contact list then put the e-mail in my inbox; otherwise put the e-mail in the trash bin.
simple enough.
the downside i can see here are
- more security and attention would be given to the address book
- legitimate e-mail from a new contact would possibly be trashed which brings up a question on how to add legitimate e-mail addresses to the address book
the upside would be
- less attention and resources would be given to the spam filter
- all the mails you receive are from people or websites that you already know. the thing with this last point is that everybody’s e-mail address can be spoofed so what looks like an e-mail from a legit address could contain spam
unfortunately, not all mail applications support filtering using the whole address book as a base or white list. i can confirm that microsoft outlook — but not outlook express — and thunderbird can be configured to use the address book as a white list.
with web-based mail systems, both google mail and yahoo! mail (yahoo! business mail also) does not support address book white list filtering. i find this a bit of a bummer because i use y! mail and gmail most of the time. i cannot confirm if hotmail has this feature since i have not used hotmail. 
i sure hope that gmail and yahoo! mail would give my feature request a little bit of thought. it may not be an end-all solution but it would be nice to have this option.
edit: 23 sept 2007: gmail says that it delivers all mails from people in the contacts list.
