Felix Lin and Linus Upson want to make it harder to send and receive e-mail. They believe it's the best way to deal with the problem of spam. On Monday, the two co-founders of AvantGo launched a new spam filter that takes the most drastic anti-spam approach possible: Users only receive e-mail from people on a list of pre-approved senders.
Lin and Upson's Qurb, a free plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, is known as a "whitelist" -- an approach considered by some as a highly efficient way to eliminate spam. Almost nothing gets through except messages sent by those on a pre-approved list.
But it's also the most extreme way to filter out spam. Sending e-mail to people using such a system means getting on their list of approved senders, an extra step that undermines the speed and convenience that makes e-mail so useful. It can also mean that no new correspondents get through at all.
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