In order for you to understand how Bulc Club protects your privacy, you need to first understand how spam blockers function.
The typical spam blocker relies on querying lists of known spam sources prior to delivering mail to your inbox. If the sender’s address, domain, or IP are on the list as a known offender, the spam blocker will either move the message to a spam folder, or modify the headers and subject to indicate that the message is spam before delivering it to your inbox.
Bulc Club operates differently than most spam blockers. We believe that the only way to prevent your address from getting into the hands of spammers is by never giving it to them in the first place. As such, every Bulc Club Member can create unlimited free forwarders (or email addresses that simply forward mail to your inbox). If one of these forwarders starts to receive spam, you can block it with the click of a button.
Oftentimes, spam messages will include beacons, or tiny uniquely named images requested from a web server. When you open a spam message, the mail client (Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail) requests the image from the server to display in the email. The simple act of requesting these images reports back to the spammer that their email has been viewed and that your email address is active. As a result of learning your email address is being actively checked, you’ll receive a barrage of additional spam messages from a variety of addresses, domains, and IPs. The traditional spam blocker may identify a few of these, but it’s unlikely they’ll identify the bulk of them.
Bulc Club forwarders can individually and instantly be disabled, signifying to Bulc Club that most (or all of the mail) that is received through the forwarder is probably spam. By clicking the “Block” button, you’re increasing the sender’s Member Rating (or spam score). The increased Member Rating is used to determine if messages sent by these senders to all Bulc Club Members should be held in a queue rather than forwarded to the Members’ actual email addresses.
One Member blocking one spammer will help block spam from this sender to all Members.
In terms of privacy, Bulc Club not only protects your email address from the outside world, but also prevents the spread of viruses and malware, blocks the transmission of your actual address to other spammers, holds messages from known spammers, prohibits beacon images in these held messages from reporting your email activity and browsing location/technology, etc.
A more in-depth look at our process can be found on our site, in our knowledgebase, and on our news/press pages. Feel free to reach out or comment on this article if you have any further questions or comments.
