Another MailWasher question

Hmmm...

Well, as you see, I have MW auto-delete blacklisted messages, so I never get to see one anyway.

If you feel comfortable with that, you might consider doing it as well.

 

Yes, I did see that. And no, I don't really like that option; at least not until I've been able to spend some time with the program to see how it works under different situations. And unless I'm mistaken, that's actually what the program itself advises. (To not engage the automatic bounce until you've seen the program in action). I'd be curious to know, if you feel like trying it once, what actually ends up happening on your system if you uncheck that option. My hunch is that you'll see the same thing that I am seeing - that even with the bounce unchecked, those emails ARE being checked to be bounced, because of the way the heuristic setting is pre-configured. Or at least that's the way it looks to me. If you decided to experiment, just let us know. TIA.

sk

 

You may want to post at the Mailwasher board you'll find at Computer Cops

I'm sure you'll get some good response there as well.

 

Great. Thanks, Tony.

sk

 

Hi sk

First your post about not marking blacklist, but it still marks for bouncing!

It does this still simply because you *told* it to by having that particular email in the Blacklist in the first place ~ ie: MW says it is Spam as the email addy is IN MY BLACKLIST, and anything in Blacklists automatically get marked for Delete/Bounce.

The fact you UNCHECKED the 'Blacklist' part DOES NOT negate the fact MW still see that particular addy as a "Spam" email so it's saying "I have to Bounce/Delete this, oops, my boss had told me not to mark for bouncing, but IT IS in my list and he HAS A HEURISTIC VALUE OPTION SET, SO BOUNCE IT IS"

I suggest you set to "None" the heuristic value, as it will totally ignore headers/content, BUT ANYTHING STILL IN BLACKLIST will get MARKED.

Does this make sense? Christ, upon read back it's still confusing lol..

Oh... see pic, about your wording

I think it's because you have your screen fonts a bit bigger than mine, also if you *look very carefully* at your screenshot, just under the word 'Only' you will see two tiny marks where it tries to 'wrap' but can't because the window is 'fixed' and can't resize.

edit: I forgot to add, see where my cursor is, you asked if there was a way if MailWasher could open your emails, well if you check this, and then AFTER processing from MW, it will auto launch your email client [in this case OE] so you do not have to "click" many extra buttons.

I suppose by now you have seen this option anyway, but thought I would point it out, as sometimes the bleeding OBVIOUS goes unnoticed.

 

Hi Mickey
thanks for the version info.
I really do not check that often, and had only got this version about 2 months back, lol

I will probably download it later on when time permits.

As for the suggestion some posts back re using anything than OE, I did try to use some [DO NOT WANT TO PAY] other clients, but found them less than satisfactory.

Either way to much trouble setting up, or slow, or sometimes I have even 'missed' an email, as upon opening OE it downloaded an email that the other client did not [time stamp proves it was there when checking for emails].

I have seen/heard of soooo many options, that I could not be bothered to try any more.

Now if you can give me a good one, free, EASY to configure/set up, QUICK/RELIABLE, then I may try again.

Cheers. Tas

 

Right, Tassie. That's what I was asking about to see if it could be configured to just delete and not bounce and delete. I just don't like the idea of bouncing because I don't think it affects the spammer, I think it ends up affecting the innocent third party who is also being used by the spammer. The thought of just blasting out tons of bounced emails - even though they are in fact spam, but most likely not sent directly by the spammer - just does not make sense to me. What would make sense would be to give the end user the option to either delete and bounce, or just straight delete. But as you pointed out, MW does not provide that option. Maybe somewhere down the road they will. And at least for now, we were able to at least clear up any questions.

And yes, I was aware that MW opens up OE, but it doesn't open up any specific emails, just the OE program itself. Thanks for all your time and input.

sk

 

Hi sk

You are probably right re bouncing them. You see, I don't get that many emails, probably only around 20-40 per week tops, where a lot of you guys probably get more than that in 1 day.

So I can see why you would want to configure MW to it's optimum to save you time having to manually do things.

You see, it's NOT THE SPAM that worries me, I can see if there are any ATTACHMENTS with them, then read the email, if I do not know who it's from, then delete it safely without it ever hitting my Inbox.

Anyway, I think have gone as far as I can with my limited knowledge/useage on MW.

Thanks for YOUR input, MICKEY THE MAN [have not had many dealing with Mickey, but obviously a knowledgeable man] and TONY KLEIN [have seen Tony in other forums and extremely helpful], as I am sure we, plus all the people who have just "viewed" this would have learnt something, no matter how small

 

To Tassie -
Yes, we have now reached 100% agreement.
Thanks again for your input.

sk

 

I know the debate on that issue, but i'm of the opinion that the only way to fight spammers is not to sit on the defensive.
Just deleting spam does nothing to stop them.
I realize that by bouncing, a lot of these don't end up at the spammers themselves since they use spoofed addys but at innocent third partys (which are not so innocent by the way)
But this is the only way IMO to aggravate isp's and web providers enough for them to start taking action. Someone does after all offer space for these spammers to originate their spam from. ISP's and web providers would have the means to stop this if they really wanted to.
When more of these so called innocents start complaining, then perhaps something will done. This is a global problem that will need to be adressed soon before the net becomes congested to an almost stand stilll.

 

This is what I like the most as the spanish use to say: ajajajajaja !

Best regards *Ari*

 

Well, I keep seeing this thread pop up and I've been saying to myself -- self, you use MailWasher, why don't you go see what that's all about. I finally decided to take a look and I have read most of the posts so I figure it's time for me to butt in.

As is typical for someone butting in, this is not *really* about MW but an alternative solution. I have used MW in conjunction with OE for about a year, but like you, had a few problems with getting mail like I wanted to. I have been casting about for a new client and finally decided on Pocomail (thanks again, Root). It's just a super nice email client.

Now, to get this back on topic -- sorta. One of the really nice features of Poco, and one I was NOT expecting, is the ability to check mail on the server -- aka, MailWasher. The difference is you can mark the mail to get, leave on the server, delete, or ANY combination of those. You can read however many of the body lines you want from the server. This is super nice for me being on dial-up because if there is just one or two I want to get and reply to NOW, I don't have to pull the entire lot just to get that one or two. I can mark the balance to leave on the server and get them when *I* want to. I still use MW to check every X minutes to see what is there and I have Poco set to NOT pull mail when I connect. I simply fire up Poco when I am ready to pull a few and mark the balance to either leave for later or delete. Pretty cool. Oh, yeah -- Poco also has its own spam filters.

I don't know if you are interested in a different client or not. It's just that I had a similar situation as you and Poco solved it nicely. Should you want to try, Poco now has a *90* day free trial, is self-contained, and non-intrusive. Of course, it has MANY more features -- I only described the one that addresses the thread.

http://www.pocomail.com/

Now, please 'scuse me for butting in.

Phil

 

Hi Phil:

Nice "butt" in mate [no pun intended, lol].

Thanks.

Cheers, Tas

 

To Phil - Thanks for chiming (as opposed to butting) in. There's no way your post could be construed as butting in; that's the whole purpose of the thread - to make it as vital and dynamic as possible. (While still staying on topic - something Krusty and I learned a little earlier in another thread. ) And therefore all the points raised here are valid. The fact that you brought up the option of Poco - an admittedly very good mail client that has been mentioned in almost every email client discussion - is valid here because this isn't just exclusively about MailWasher per se; it's also about the whole matter of email clients and spam and how to best deal with the whole scope of the problem. And the fact that you tried MW in conjunction with OE first, but then found something more workable gives you just the right background to give your input excellent context. So I hope you or anyone else never feels that by providing valuable input into a forum like this you are 'butting in'. Thank you sincerely for your input, and please don't hesitate to contribute as often as you like.

To MTM - I don't necessarily disagree with you. What I had attempted to do at the outset of this discussion was learn how to break down those cryptic headers and contact. if possible, the appropriate parties involved at the ISP level, but I didn't get very far with that. I was/am willing to go that route in an attempt to do EXACTLY what you are talking about. I personally feel that trying to make the ISP's take this more seriously is really the only way to go. What I don't think is either right or effective is to take a shotgun approach - which is what it sounds to me as if MW does - by just indiscriminately blasting/bouncing back all these already spoofed/re-directed emails all over the place.

As far as your feelings that the people who don't know that they're unwittingly spewing out emails without their control are not so innocent is something I'd rather not even get into. But what I will say by way of wrapping this up is that in looking at the configuration of MW, I did find a tab - it's the third one in the options list - that enables/disables bouncing completely. I haven't gotten one of those mail bombs that only come to one specific account of mine since disabling bouncing completely with that option, but by tomorrow there will be more, I am sure. If MW in that configuration will spot it - still using the heuristic rule and the spam data bases - flag it for deletion, and not engage the bounce protocol, then the fact of the matter is, I'll be satisfied. I will definitely update this forum with the results tomorrow. And thanks to you, MtM, as always, for your very informed input. You continue to help out a lot of us who have less experience and insight into both the fine points as well as the big picture, and don't ever think that I don't recognize and appreciate that. The same goes for Paul and the rest of the mods here. I'm sure there are a lot of other things you all could be doing on a Saturday night.
Peace and continued New Year's Blessings. (Especially to whoever is in need of some healing over at Becky's.)

sk

 

Just a sort of tech update note on MailWasher. The more I use it the more I like using it. But I was noticing that despite having turned off the bounce option in all the visible configuration menus, I was still seeing it checked automatically on some, but not all items it listed. I got tired of unchecking the bounce option, so I went 'looking' again to see what I was missing; and how I could get that option unchecked, if possible. What I found was that if I went through each and every rule by hand, and unchecked the bounce option from inside the rule itself, THEN it would list the culprits it found with only the options I wanted - add to blacklist, and delete, without the bounce option being checked. NOW I REALLY like mailwasher!!! And that's what's so cool about programs that allow this degree of configuration: Those who want the bounce option have it and can use it to their heart's content, and those who don't want it don't have to use it because we're not locked into it. AWESOME!

Thanks to everyone who provided input on both sides. Hopefully, as a result of this thread, accurate info is now available so that anyone interested can now configure the program however s/he wants to. And to me, that's what all of this is really all about.

So much so, that if MS could only LEARN that, I honestly don't know if I'd even care about their monopoly status. (That's actually a more frightening thought than I realized before I saw those words hit the light of day. I'm being serious here; it's the fact that not ONLY is MS such a monstrous monopoly, it's the fact that they seek to dictate preferences on TOP of it. But if they were a more "beneficent dictator", so to speak - one that offered end users more freedom to configure programs the way we want - I honestly don't know if I'd object, although I probably still should, because the notion of monopolies and even beneficent dictatorships SHOULD still be something objectionable. Imagine if they ever decided to change enough to be almost 'likable'. Yikes. Very scary. Although highly unlikely. )

sk