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A Better Way to Fight Spam

Have you ever wondered how your email address ended up on a mailing list that you just can't get off? I have and I suspect it's because my email address is being bought and sold by numerous companies for various reasons. I don't always take the time to read the email usage policy of a site and I also don't believe that site operators are always 100% up front about what they plan on doing with my data. Enter A Better Way to Fight Spam.I suspect that we'll all be using something like the service below for SMS (Text Messaging) spam control. It would in essence be a filtering system for SMS.

Business Idea: Create a service that easily lets users set up a series of forwarding email addresses (or text message number) that will let them keep their primary email addresses (or phone numbers) confidential. The system will keep track of the privacy policies on sites when you submit your email address for example when you fill out an online form. The system would use statistical analysis to keep track of the spammers.

The system could work as follows:

1. Sign up for an account and install the desktop or browser add on.
2. When you fill out an online form, right click on the privacy page to capture it to store it to your account.
3. The system will then generate a "forwarding" email alias that you use instead of your actual email address. The whole process takes less than a few seconds. (A very small price to pay to avoid SPAM).
4. The system keeps track of how many email get sent to the newly created alias. If you get spammed and other members get spammed too, that creates evidence of spamming that can be used to sue the offender so they STOP SPAMMING.
5. You can log in and manage your account. You can see all the messages that have been sent to the various aliases. You could set up various rules to forward or delete messages that meet specific criteria.

Challenges-- This model isn't without its fair of challenges but perhaps this will give someone inspiration that will lead to breakthrough services in other areas.

1. The biggest challenge is that spammers are extremely resourceful. It wouldn't take them too long to figure out the domain or web addresses for the protected users. Not that this is a bad thing, in fact this may be a good idea because it accomplished the objectives in that it stops them from spamming you.
2. The second challenge is that Gmail and other services are pretty good at stopping spam. In other words, this is a competitive market but this service represents a new and better way of handling spam.
3. The final major objection has to do with adoption rate. Can you get enough people to sign up for the service so you can make money?

Potential revenue models: There are numerous opportunities to make money. Here are the 3 that I came up with:

1. Sue and settle. If you notice that a company is not abiding by its published email usage policy, you can step in and sue on behalf of your subscribers.
2. Advertising. Ah, the old standby revenue model... When users log in to manage their accounts, they may have to view ads that are related to the sites where they have filled out online forms. This would be a very productive list because if they filled out a form on one site, it's logical that they are interested in goods or services provided by a related company.
3. Subscription basis. You could charge a subscription fee.

Market- B2C. I think the market would be heavy internet users or heavy text message users if you derive a model for SMS/Text Messaging. Your mother-in-law probably won't know enough about this to use it effectively. Your target demographic would be tech savvy, younger groups of people; still a very large consumer group though.

Inspiration for Idea: I needed to come up with an idea for a business contest. I had just learned of "crowd-sourcing" and wanted to enter an idea that could be built, used and marketed by the "crowd".