Gennux has a genuinely effective anti-spam idea, but ISPs aren't interested. Instead, they want the cheap and simple pieces of its technology.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [March 19, 2004]

Disposable e-mail addresses promise to enable end users to find our who's really selling their personal information. If, for example, you tell amazon.com you can be reached at myname.amazon.com@myisp.com, and you receive mortgage or other spam at that address, you know the company's sold your name.

Efforts to enact laws to punish those who fund spam were thwarted by Congress' CAN SPAM act (see Commentary: Politicians Send Spammers Holiday Gift). But, using Gennux's product, ISPs could enable end users to trace list vendors themselves (for more information on Gennux's disposable e-mail technology, see Addressing an Anti-Spam Challenge).

Sam Huang, Gennux's co-founder, president, and CEO, says that instead, ISPs asked for the company's cheap challenge-response and whitelist system without the disposable e-mail system. In response, Gennux has separated the various technologies in its product into modules, and renamed the whole package.

The product is now named eW@ll and includes the following modules:

MailW@ll provides basic e-mail protection and has proved popular even with small ISPs.

PDAW@ll, designed for larger ISPs with corporate and government customers, has a stripped-down interface designed specifically for PDAs, including RIM Blackberries.

eSm@rt, the company's innovative disposable address technology, has not been embraced by small ISPs. Although this is a truly effective answer to spam, deploying it would require user education. Small ISPs appear to embrace "cookie cutter" technology that will be familiar to end users instead of technology which, though effective, would be unfamiliar.

CellW@ll is designed for carriers, and protects cell phones from spam by using the sender validation technology of MailW@ll in an even easier to use format.

Huang is particularly bullish about CellW@ll. The company is exhibiting with Trade Team Canada at the International Communications and Technology Expo (ICT Expo 2004) in April in Hong Kong. There, he hopes to meet with representatives from some of the largest cellular text messaging providers in the world—whose networks are suffering from massive spam problems.

With the modular structure of its products, Gennux can continue to serve small ISPs as it seeks large carrier customers.

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