America Online announced today, the acquisition of Mailblocks, a personal web-based email service for consumers.

Mailblocks is known for its development and deployment of “challenge/response” technology to fight unwanted junk email and authenticate legitimate email senders. They are also recognized as having other industry preferred email features, including an easy-to-use, sleek email user interface.

“This acquisition speaks volumes about AOL’s commitment to providing the best email and spam-fighting tools to our members, as well as our overall, ongoing commitment to the battle against unwanted junk email and the spammers who try to send it,” said Roy Ben-Yoseph, Director of Email Products at AOL. “We are thrilled to welcome Mailblocks and its energetic, talented team of innovators to our company. Our members will be thrilled with the many attributes of Mailblocks’ award-winning, cutting-edge email technology. We expect these enhancements to offer AOL members the ability to further reduce spam in their email inbox, building on the improvements we’ve already delivered to members this year.”

“Mailblocks’ challenge/response technology, as well as its easy-to-use web mail user interface, will provide even more benefits and value to our members’ communications portfolio on AOL,” Ben-Yoseph added. “This will help members more effectively manage, protect and consolidate their email – and gets us even closer to accomplishing our daily mission at AOL of increasing the amount of wanted, “good” email while eradicating the amount of unwanted, ‘bad’ email in the inbox.”

AOL members and users of AOL Network services will begin to utilize the benefits of Mailblocks technology through a series of phased, convenient upgrades in the near future.

Jeremy Muncy is a staff writer for www.webproworld.com