Questions re: MailWasher

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I’ve been bombarded with Spam for the past 2 or 3 weeks and although Outlook (2007) has a decent Junk Mail filter, there is still too many that are ending up in my Inbox. So, I decided to try MailWasher. I have some questions about the program which I hope some here can answer:

1. Is MailWasher a decent anti-spam application or has it seen its heyday and there are others that are much better?

2. How/Can I configure it to deal with most of this spam where the sender is using one of my own e-mail addresses and the recipient’s address (me) is the same address? If I Blacklist these e-mails then I’m thinking I’m essentially blocking ALL e-mail sent to me.

3. Lastly, (for now anyway)… I’m not going to be very happy with this program IF I have to click on the “Process Mail” button every time I want to be able to get the non-spam messages via Outlook. Is there an option to automatically process these e-mail messages so that they will be received in Outlook without having to do this manually?

THANKS!

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I have used Mailwasher for quite some time now and have found it to be solid and reliable.
You get to preview e-mail and delete spam or other trash before you have to download it to your machine.
I would suggest you give it a try. You’ll like it.
Best regards,
Slim

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How/Can I configure it to deal with most of this spam where the sender is using one of my own e-mail addresses and the recipient’s address (me) is the same address? If I Blacklist these e-mails then I’m thinking I’m essentially blocking ALL e-mail sent to me.

I’ve been seeing a lot of these “from me/to me” messages in my Postini quarantine for my work address. Perhaps you could handle them with an Outlook rule to move them to folder for occasional review? This assumes you do not routinely cc yourself on outgoing messages…

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I’ve been seeing a lot of these “from me/to me” messages in my Postini quarantine for my work address. Perhaps you could handle them with an Outlook rule to move them to folder for occasional review? This assumes you do not routinely cc yourself on outgoing messages…

I actually started making rules for these type of messages. But there are SO MANY with different subjects that I decided it would be futile to try and keep up and my Rules menu would be incredibly large. That’s what precipitated me trying MailWasher.

Let me ask another question about MailWasher that is related to #3 above:

4. When I click the “Process Mail” button after some time Outlook does open if it had been closed. But, since MailWasher wants the automatic check for mail feature in Outlook turned off, I have to manually click on “Send/Receive” to download the mail that MailWasher has processed. Is there no way to get mail in Outlook without having to go through this routine?

Perhaps I’m so used to getting my e-mail automatically every 15 minutes that having to – manually open MailWasher, click on the “Process Mail” button, wait for MailWasher to do its thing, open Outlook GUI, click on “Send/Receive” and then wait awhile for the good messages to arrive – that this is quickly becoming an irritant.

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… Perhaps I’m so used to getting my e-mail automatically every 15 minutes that having to – manually open MailWasher, click on the “Process Mail” button, wait for MailWasher to do its thing, open Outlook GUI, click on “Send/Receive” and then wait awhile for the good messages to arrive – that this is quickly becoming an irritant.

If you give yourself some time, you’ll get used to it – after all it’s only a few clicks – why take a chance at a missed piece of garbage coming down off that server?

Seriously though, it may not be for everyone but the routine is so commonplace with me now that I don’t even think about it. As a matter of fact, I use that MW preview screen to discard a lot of mail from “legit” sources . I get special sale notices from a number of businesses that I deal with and the vast majority, I don’t want to read, but I don’t want to opt out, so I use the MW preview screen and it it’s not something I’m interested in, I mark it for deletion.

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When we all used slow dial-up lines I understood the need for SPAM filter software that avoided downloading the entire message. With modern broadband connections I just don’t get it. I can download all my email automatically every few minutes and use local junk mail filters to move things to different folders that I can review if I ever need to.

[*]Most ISPs have some level of junk mail filter that removes the worst of the trash, and I very rarely look through (and delete) this junk, using a webmail interface.
[*]The outlook junk email filter does a pretty good job of identifying most of the rest of the trash, and I generally look through this quickly about once a day.
[*]I use rules to filter out quite a bit more stuff into folders that I glance through more regularly before deleting them.

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When we all used slow dial-up lines I understood the need for SPAM filter software that avoided downloading the entire message. With modern broadband connections I just don’t get it.

Stuart,

Perhaps this will help you “get it”? I average 300-500 spam messages daily. Most are of the variety as noted above, i.e., the “To:” and “From:” addresses are the same and are usually mine. I have 6 accounts and thus the possible reason I’m getting so much spam. As I also explained above, I do think Outlook’s “Junk Mail Filter” does a reasonably good job, but it doesn’t recognize these identical “To/From” addresses. If you add them to the Junk Mail, then you effectively block ALL mail sent to that address; again because the “To/From” addresses are your own. I am trying MailWasher with the hopes of intercepting these types of messages.

And yes, my ISP has a Spam filter also which blocks many as well.

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… I decided to try MailWasher …

1. Is MailWasher a decent anti-spam application or has it seen its heyday and there are others that are much better?
[indent]I’ve used it ever since “the beginning” and I wouldn’t be without it. There may well be others but I must admit to not having looked.
[/indent]2. How/Can I configure it to deal with most of this spam where the sender is using one of my own e-mail addresses and the recipient’s address (me) is the same address? If I Blacklist these e-mails then I’m thinking I’m essentially blocking ALL e-mail sent to me.
[indent]In the Tools command, both Spam Tools and Options open the same window. Locate My Filters and create something like you see in the graphic below. I don’t know why, but sometimes it works and on other emails it doesn’t. But, for me it at least marks some of them for deletion.
[/indent]3. Lastly, (for now anyway)… I’m not going to be very happy with this program IF I have to click on the “Process Mail” button every time I want to be able to get the non-spam messages via Outlook. Is there an option to automatically process these e-mail messages so that they will be received in Outlook without having to do this manually?
[indent]I’m afraid that you’ll have to do that and personally, I WANT it that way. MW IS darn good, but it isn’t perfect, so I preview, make a change if necessary, process and Alt-Tab to Thunderbird. There are places in the Filters, Blacklist, Origin of Spam and Virus where you can mark it to automatically perform the action, but I don’t use any of them.
[/indent]

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2. How/Can I configure it to deal with most of this spam where the sender is using one of my own e-mail addresses and the recipient’s address (me) is the same address? If I Blacklist these e-mails then I’m thinking I’m essentially blocking ALL e-mail sent to me.

I don’t use Mailwasher but in my Spam blocker, I have created two rules to eliminate this from me/to me junk. Since I never cc myself on emails, the first rule is: if the From line is My email address AND the To line is also my address, the mail is UNAUTHORIZED and blocked.
The second would be for the occasional times when I might want to check to see if emails are being sent and received, so the rule is added that if the SUBJECT line is a code name/number that I created, then the from/to me address is ALLOWED.

I don’t know if mailwasher can let you create these rules but you might want to check into it. This works for me.

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I don’t use Mailwasher but in my Spam blocker, I have created two rules to eliminate this from me/to me junk. Since I never cc myself on emails, the first rule is: if the From line is My email address AND the To line is also my address, the mail is UNAUTHORIZED and blocked.

Yep…. discovered where I can create rules manually and did as you suggested for all my accounts. I’m curious to see if it works, which I suspect it will.

Thanks for the suggestion which should have been obvious to me.

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Yep…. discovered where I can create rules manually and did as you suggested for all my accounts. I’m curious to see if it works, which I suspect it will.

Since you find that the Microsoft spam filter is not good enough for you and you want to get away from rules based classification check out SpamBayes: Bayesian anti-spam classifier written in Python.. There is also POPFile – Automatic Email Classification – Trac. I’ve used both but I find the MS spam filter is OK for me now. It has been a while since I’ve used Popfile. I think by itself it is a little tricky to get to work with Outlook. Spambayes was very easy to get to work. It has not been updated in a while.

Both of these worked well. They each “learned” fast what I wanted to be considered spam. Both are free.

Joe

--Joe

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I can confirm that SpamBayes works well in Outlook (at least in versions before 2007), but I don’t think it’ll meet Pilgrim’s requirements. SpamBayes operates inside the mail client, i.e. with downloaded messages. Because of the volume of spam that he receives, he prefers to filter out spam before downloading it.

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I can confirm that SpamBayes works well in Outlook (at least in versions before 2007), but I don’t think it’ll meet Pilgrim’s requirements. SpamBayes operates inside the mail client, i.e. with downloaded messages. Because of the volume of spam that he receives, he prefers to filter out spam before downloading it.

I read his original post as being upset with the amount of spam that the MS filter missed not the amount that is received. That is why I mentioned Spambayes and Popfile. I think both are very good classification engines that “learn” quickly how each user wants to classify email.

Joe

--Joe

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I’m curious to see if it works, which I suspect it will.

So according to Al’s link the rules should work OK in Mailwasher also.
And jonwallace says it works in Poptray.

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So according to Al’s link the rules should work OK in Mailwasher also.

One more thing I’ll say for Firetrust – they are very responsive when you ask for help! I wrote to them late yesterday asking why my “from/to” filter sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t ( [post=”780859″]Post 780859[/post] ). This morning I found a response in my email suggesting that I change the filter slightly. The block in red is my email address. I’ll have to see what happens now. Otherwise, I’m still satisfied with MailWasher.

(Sipport spotted right away that I always have my full name in my email address.)

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I don’t know if mailwasher can let you create these rules …

See [post=”780859″]Post 780859[/post].

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I don’t use Mailwasher but in my Spam blocker, I have created two rules to eliminate this from me/to me junk. Since I never cc myself on emails, the first rule is: if the From line is My email address AND the To line is also my address, the mail is UNAUTHORIZED and blocked.
The second would be for the occasional times when I might want to check to see if emails are being sent and received, so the rule is added that if the SUBJECT line is a code name/number that I created, then the from/to me address is ALLOWED.

Bob got in here before me. I use Poptray as a mail notifier rather than leave Thunderbird open all the time. This allows me to create rules just like Bob’s to delete (and other things) emails as required. It’s not specifically a spam blocker, I use Popfile for that (and to sort mail from all my accounts into categories that Thunderbird sorts at the other end)

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I have all my email accounts come through Gmail. If I get 5 spam emails a week that actually gets through, I’m shocked. I then flag them as spam and they don’t come back.

No extra programs to install, no processes to run and I can get my email from any internet connected computer or portable device. It works great!

Oh, it supports IMAP too.

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I have all my email accounts come through Gmail. If I get 5 spam emails a week that actually gets through, I’m shocked. I then flag them as spam and they don’t come back.

I think I’m in a very small minority on this subject, so I risk the ‘wrath’ of other Loungers when I say this. I’ve always been very much against all the ISP provided and web mail provided spam filters because of the myriad ‘war stories’ of legitimate email that was blocked or deleted by such a service! There are many, many such tales.

Therefore, I prefer to see, analyze and delete when appropriate, all mail arriving at my ISP’s server in my name. I don’t EVER have to put up with the junk reaching my computer and whatever limited risk of (un-opened) exposure there might be, albeit limited.

Now, I again say that I do not get the 300-500 or more emails per day that some of you receive, so the 20-30 at a time that I get is a manageable task for review and deletion.

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I think I’m in a very small minority on this subject, so I risk the ‘wrath’ of other Loungers when I say this. I’ve always been very much against all the ISP provided and web mail provided spam filters because of the myriad ‘war stories’ of legitimate email that was blocked or deleted by such a service! There are many, many such tales.

Ditto from me!

So far, MailWasher has been working great now that I’ve figured out how to configure things and after some training. The extra steps I still find annoying, especially having to click on the “Send/Receive” button in Outlook after clicking the “Process Mail” button in MailWasher. It would be nice since MailWasher automatically launches your mail client if it also started the “Send/Receive” function too. But, again it is but a minor gripe that I’m going to have to live with if I’m going to use this program.

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Ditto from me!

So far, MailWasher has been working great now that I’ve figured out how to configure things and after some training. The extra steps I still find annoying, especially having to click on the “Send/Receive” button in Outlook after clicking the “Process Mail” button in MailWasher. It would be nice since MailWasher automatically launches your mail client if it also started the “Send/Receive” function too. But, again it is but a minor gripe that I’m going to have to live with if I’m going to use this program.

I am using MW ( a long-term fan) and Outlook 2007. When I select “Process Mail” in MW, OL opens and automatically sends and receives without any further encouragement from me. You should perhaps check your settings in OL and MW, and ask for help via the MW forum if you are still having problems.

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I am using MW ( a long-term fan) and Outlook 2007. When I select “Process Mail” in MW, OL opens and automatically sends and receives without any further encouragement from me. You should perhaps check your settings in OL and MW, and ask for help via the MW forum if you are still having problems.

Thanks Dianne,

I have checked my Options/Settings in both programs and they seem to be correct. So, I visited the MW forums and found This Thread in which it was stated that having to manually use the “Send/Receive” button in OE has always been the case; i.e., “Send/Receive” has never started automatically as you seem to have. The OP (again using OE and not Outlook) said he enabled a setting in OE’s Options: “Send and receive messages at startup”. But that option doesn’t appear to be available in Outlook. Of course, even if it was an option one would then have to close Outlook afterward or it wouldn’t work.

Soooooo, since your setup seems to be the exception to what was said to be the rule, I’m wondering what settings you have in Outlook’s “Options > Mail Setup > Send/Receive” section? OR, perhaps you have something else configured that effects this feature? Care to share?

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Thanks Dianne,

I have checked my Options/Settings in both programs and they seem to be correct. So, I visited the MW forums and found This Thread in which it was stated that having to manually use the “Send/Receive” button in OE has always been the case; i.e., “Send/Receive” has never started automatically as you seem to have. The OP (again using OE and not Outlook) said he enabled a setting in OE’s Options: “Send and receive messages at startup”. But that option doesn’t appear to be available in Outlook. Of course, even if it was an option one would then have to close Outlook afterward or it wouldn’t work.

Soooooo, since your setup seems to be the exception to what was said to be the rule, I’m wondering what settings you have in Outlook’s “Options > Mail Setup > Send/Receive” section? OR, perhaps you have something else configured that effects this feature? Care to share?

Jeff- I’m not sure why I don’t have your problem. I can’t recall the reason, but I opted not to disable automatic email checking in OL ( thus not following the advised settings for MW). Perhaps it was because I had to use “send/receive” when OL opened, but not certain about that. I left the OL settings at default, and as soon as I use MW to process mail, the mail flows into OL. I didn’t tweak MW, so it’s setting are the default ones.
Sorry to be so uninformative.
Dianne

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Thanks Dianne,

Now, the only thing I would ask further is the time element you have for MW to check for mail?

And, how often do you use the “Process Mail” function?

My understanding of why MW recommends disabling automatic send/receive in Outlook is to prevent e-mails from being downloaded that have not been processed through MW thus eliminating downloading spam. But if your way works well, then with the information you provide to these two additional questions, I just might find the happy medium.

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Thanks Dianne,

Now, the only thing I would ask further is the time element you have for MW to check for mail?

And, how often do you use the “Process Mail” function?

My understanding of why MW recommends disabling automatic send/receive in Outlook is to prevent e-mails from being downloaded that have not been processed through MW thus eliminating downloading spam. But if your way works well, then with the information you provide to these two additional questions, I just might find the happy medium.

Despite my not disabling send/receive in OL, unwanted mail doesn’t sneak through from MW. Perhaps because I have been using it for several years, and my blacklist is lengthy – these emails are set up for deletion at the server, so I assume that there is an automatic filtering out of unwanted mail. Or perhaps I am very lucky!
Mail does sometimes appear in OL before I select “process mail,” however the blacklisted and spam email very rarely gets through. I use First Alert (subscription) along with MW, and it does a great job of picking up the baddies.
I have set MW to check mail at 3 minute intervals. When I had it set to the default MW interval, I still didn’t have the problem you are experiencing.
The frequency of using “process mail” is very variable. If I spot an email which I want to access quickly, I use it then, or just do it at random as time permits to read the mail.
Not very enlightening for you, I admit!
Regards
Dianne

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Despite my not disabling send/receive in OL, unwanted mail doesn’t sneak through from MW. Perhaps because I have been using it for several years, and my blacklist is lengthy – these emails are set up for deletion at the server, so I assume that there is an automatic filtering out of unwanted mail. Or perhaps I am very lucky!
Mail does sometimes appear in OL before I select “process mail,” however the blacklisted and spam email very rarely gets through. I use First Alert (subscription) along with MW, and it does a great job of picking up the baddies.
I have set MW to check mail at 3 minute intervals. When I had it set to the default MW interval, I still didn’t have the problem you are experiencing.
The frequency of using “process mail” is very variable. If I spot an email which I want to access quickly, I use it then, or just do it at random as time permits to read the mail.
Not very enlightening for you, I admit!
Regards
Dianne

PS: I omitted to mention that the emails which download into OL without using MW “process mail” do so only if I have OL open.
Cheers
Dianne

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Ditto from me!

So far, MailWasher has been working great now that I’ve figured out how to configure things and after some training. The extra steps I still find annoying, especially having to click on the “Send/Receive” button in Outlook after clicking the “Process Mail” button in MailWasher. It would be nice since MailWasher automatically launches your mail client if it also started the “Send/Receive” function too. But, again it is but a minor gripe that I’m going to have to live with if I’m going to use this program.

I just received the Mail Washer Newsletter and in it they announce that an upgrade to version 6.51’s available.

And also includes instructions on ‘Spam from your own address’

and how to fix it. The instructions are as follows:

Make your own filter by going to Settings > Filters and then click Add and make a filter, and shows you what it should look like.

I’m certain that most of you know how but it was new to me.

It statedthat Hotmail now has free POP3 access, plus announced the complete re-write of the new Mail Washer soon to be released.

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… How/Can I configure it to deal with most of this spam where the sender is using one of my own e-mail addresses and the recipient’s address (me) is the same address?

Just a followup and a (sort of) amusing footnote. As I mentioned in a post above, I entered into an email conversation with a support rep at Firetrust and he was VERY helpful. We exchanged a few emails about what to put in my FROM/TO me filter. During that email conversation I submitted a graphic to him of a version of the filter that “seemed” to be working. It wasn’t 100% but it was getting close.

The somewhat amusing footnote is that in the email I got overnight about a new and upcoming version of MailWasher Pro ( [post=”782289″]Post 782289[/post] ) was this:
[indent]5. Spam From Your Own Address?

Are you sick of spam masquerading as though its from yourself? I think we’ve all received spam at some time which looks like it comes from ourselves. One of our users kindly sent in a filter to recognize this spam and so we’d like to share it with you.

Make your own filter by going to Settings » Filters and then click Add and make a filter like this (but make sure you use your own email address).

[/indent]
I don’t know if I’m the person he’s talking about because they didn’t tell me they were gonna use my filter in a mailing, but that was the last email I sent to them. Since that time I’ve added a THIRD entry to the filter, shown below, because I always include my whole name in any emails I send, so if it ain’t there, it isn’t a legit email from me. The last thing is that the return path in all the “spam” versions DOES contain my email address, so I’ve modified the filter accordingly and haven’t sent that change on to the support folks at MW. There’s still a few sneaking in, but the above filter is catching almost all of it.

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Hmm, I just made the filters for my 5 addresses very simple:

IF the “To:” field has xxxx@myaddress.com.
AND
IF the “From:” field has xxxx@myaddress.com.

THEN it is marked for deletion.

This works for me 100% of the time so far. If I want to send myself an e-mail, then I’ll simply use a different account to send it from the one I’m sending it to.

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Hmm, I just made the filters for my 5 addresses very simple:

Very interesting, Jeff. That’s the way my original filter ( [post=”780859″]Post 780859[/post] ) was and it was missing a bunch of ’em.

Good luck, and one way or the other, I’m still sold on MailWasher, maybe because I don’t get hundreds at a time and I like to review before they’re deleted or blacklisted.

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