SquareAnswer pegs e-mail authentication into the round hole of spam

Hoping to earn its reputation by ensuring the reputations of e-mail senders and thereby eliminating the plague of unwanted e-mail, Westwood, Mass.-based SquareAnswer officially launched its business this week and introduced its e-mail authentication solution to service providers.

Using a combination authentication and reputation appliance and the world's first global clearinghouse of e-mail senders and compliant bulk e-mailers, SquareAnswer is trying to change the way e-mail is sent and received in order to free service providers from most of the cost and burden of managing e-mail.

"If we know who the sender is, we can minimize the likelihood almost to zero that a message you receive is spam," said Jonathan Gaines, chief marketing and sales officer at SquareAnswer.

The technology goes a step beyond anti-spam solutions and boundary security applications by automatically tagging every e-mail with either a first- or third-class e-mail designation and deleting instead of storing non-deliverable third-class e-mail.

In development since last February and doing business since August, SquareAnswer authenticates e-mails at the sender level rather than at the service provider's e-mail server. It uses a combination of an e-mail gateway and an e-mail reputation/authentication database (ERAD) that is populated by the Web-based entryways called ImaRealPerson and ImaBulkEmailer.

ImaRealPerson.com uses simple, voluntary online verification tests to ensure that the sender of an e-mail is, as the name implies, a real person. ImaBulkEmailer does the same for bulk e-mailers such as legitimate advertisers and opt-in newsletters.

Unknown messages are held and available for inspection by end-users. Senders are given the opportunity to release their e-mails for delivery to intended recipients. Gaines said that on average more than 80% of e-mail an Internet service provider gets is spam.

He is emphatic about what SquareAnswer is not. It is not an anti-spam e-mail filter, challenge/response system, secure boundary product, bonded sender program nor a desktop e-mail protection system.

"We are a sender verification system," Gaines said.

The gateway system sits between a service provider's e-mail server and its spam filter solution and allows the additional check to ensure unwanted e-mail doesn't get through.

The ERAD system is currently hosted by SquareAnswer, but will move to a larger hosting sight within the next few quarters.

Another distinction according to Gaines is that SquareAnswer does not block legitimate e-mail.

"We are a commerce-friendly solution. We let compliant bulk e-mail through because it's the law," he said.