Mailwasher Pro - Paid-For Version That Does More (By All Accounts) (MailWasher)

Member Name: Nibelung

Product:	MailWasher
Date:	25/05/04 (369 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Handles several accounts instead of one only, Interactive database allows you to nail the spammers if you find them first, Seems to be more 'hands-free' than the free version

Disadvantages: Only web-mail it can handle is Hotmail although all POP3 are accepted, Costs $37US

I had been using the ?freeware? version of Mailwasher for quite some time, never really querying whether it was achieving much or not.

It was easy to use, leaving you only to tick (or otherwise) potential Spam, which would lead to its blacklisting, and more attractively, ?bouncing? back to source.

However, if the stream of seemingly never-ending exhortations to buy Viagra, ?extend my membership?, buy life insurance, buy suspiciously cheap software or accept invitations to join porn sites were anything to go by, bouncing and blacklisting was doing little except saving me the bother of downloading e-mail complete with its file attachment only to find it was Spam all along.

It?s almost as if the ?bounce? facility, however satisfying it might sound, is about as effective as one of those push-button ?zapper?s you used to be able to buy to vent your anger with a burst of machine gun fire, when someone wound you up whilst driving.

I suspect that the whole problem with tracking and blocking Spam, is that the ?Spammers? keep coming back, having stolen someone else?s computer ID in the meantime, making blacklisting their previous apparent e-mail address futile. I?ve even had notification that a message I?ve sent (supposedly) has been bounced when I?d no knowledge of it in the first instance!

As a bit of freeware, Mailwasher was at least doing something by preventing my Outlook Express from getting clogged up.

Unfortunately, the free version only catered for one e-mail account, which is a nuisance since we have four between us, if you count our Hotmail accounts too. It won?t deal with web-mail anyway, only POP3 accounts.

It wasn?t really till recently that someone suggested using ?K9? instead, which I tried. I don?t know whether it?s just me, or the fact that thanks to a utility called Onspeed
, my proxy server keeps changing, but for the life of me, I couldn?t make it work, or even see what it was supposed to do. I could ?get mail? and mark it for blacklisting, bouncing and deletion, but when I went back to Outlook Express, it was still there. A lack of help file didn?t exactly ?.errr?help. No doubt this stuff?s available on the web, before anyone leaps to defends K9 as the best thing since Spam sandwiches, but if a little utility that?s supposed to make life easier fails to be instinctive in use, it falls at the first fence as far as I?m concerned.

Then, a few days ago, a colleague mentioned to me that he?d lashed out on the ?big boy?s? paid-for version of Mailwasher Pro 4.1 (MWP), so as I?d at least found Mailwasher to be easy to use, I decided to investigate. The full-blown version costs $37US for purchase via credit card over the web.

The download from www.mailwasher.net is about 2.8 mbytes in size, and you get three e-mail confirmations back. One from Worldpay to confirm the payment and two from Mailwasher, one a registration code to enliven all of the software?s features and the other, a password and account number at FirstAlert! ? more of that later.

Be warned, the registration code is VERY long, running into what must be hundreds of characters, so block, copy and paste it; I also took the precaution of loading both e-mails to a floppy for future reference. (At last, a use for a floppy ? I?d almost forgotten about them!)

SETTING UP

ACCOUNTS - Now that you?ve got a Spam filter that will accept more than one account, you have a little more setting up to do, not unlike adding a new account to Outlook Express. In the first instance MWP assumes that your existing accou
nt on the freeware version becomes your first.

Then you need to know whether the account is POP3 (which accounts for the majority of well-known ISP?s with the exception of AOL), IMAP, Hotmail and AOL. Curiously, there is no generic web-mail set-up, so other than Hotmail, this isn?t included; sorry, Yahoo-ers. In setting up Hotmail, you are asked whether this is supplied via Hotmail or MSN Hotmail.

If these are already accounts you have set up in Outlook Express or whatever you use as a e-mail client, and they should be, then you can crib the details from there. MWP works with a number of other e-mail clients such as Eudora and Pegasus.

FILTERING ? MWP has a few tricks up its sleeve when it comes to sniffing out rogue e-mail. One is to import your existing address book on the fairly well based assumption that no-one in it ?Spams? you! This becomes your ?Friends? list, although, later, as you scan through possibly Spams, you can add others to this list without it reflecting on your address book.

Then MWP keeps in contact with a couple of well-known ?blacklist? databases of known sources of Spam ? even these can be recovered as ?Friends? if you REALLY want to, after all, every now and then, some of that junk mail that drops on the mat turns out to be useful, and I suppose the same MIGHT just apply to Spam. MWP also affords you the facility to read in full any e-mails that you?re going to dump at this early stage ? this is a big improvement over the old freeware version, which just gave you a taster, e.g. ?Guy?s! Get a longer, harder???? ? IQ test? What? I don?t understand.

I mentioned a facility called
FirstAlert! before, which is included in the initial price for MWP. This is an interactive Spam database, allowing you, the first recipient to mark a nuisance or junk e-mail as Spam, and upload it to the FirstAlert database, where it is checked (presumably to see that it?s not just you being spiteful), before being added to the list, which becomes MWP?s third line of defence in weeding out the crap.

VIEWING YOUR E-MAIL WHILST MWP LEARNS

You use MWP before using your e-mail client. Your ISP/Hotmail server is polled and a familiar list of ?stuff? pops into place, in the form of headers for each e-mail, where they came from and whether MWP considers them to be ?blacklisted, ?possible Spam? or from a ?friend?. If the ?possible Spams? turn out to be genuine, you can click on a small ?envelope? icon in the Learning column to confirm that it is indeed wanted ? this will lead to future e-mails from this source being marked as ?friend?. If later on, following on from Woody Allen?s proposition that ?a friend in need is a?..pest?, you can always revert them to being blacklisted.

If you become the first person to identify definite Spam, you can tick the Report box, and this will inform FirstAlert! As well as merely deleting the obvious Spam, you can also arrange to ?bounce? it, but as I said before, I can?t help feeling that this will only result in someone who didn?t know they?d even sent the mail being censured ? it?s happened to me.

Once you?ve hit the ?Process Mail? button, your e-mail client will load automatically, assuming that it wasn?t 100% Spam in which case, it won?t bother.

One small niggle here ? because Hotmail re
tains your mail at the server, it keeps appearing on the MWP screen until you actually delete it. POP3 mail has no such problem ? once you?ve seen it the first time, you don?t get sent it again.

I?ve been using this software for several days now, and it does indeed seem a more hands-off affair than the older free version. It?s now quite normal for me to get my latest e-mail download, nod in agreement with MWP?s suggestions and hit the ?Process? button.

THE DIFFERENCE S

You get to turn up and take part, reporting Spam to a centralised database

The existing databases seem more comprehensive than before.

You can see the whole e-mail text content, and even polish off a quick reply there and then.

It borrows your address book for a head start in working out who your ?friends? are. Mind you some of my friends are pretty scary ? probably the inspiration for the phrase, ?with friends like these, who needs enemas??

It handles several accounts, including their aliases. This is very useful where my ISP will insist on sending e-mails to cg014e7214 (oh they don?t write numbers like that any more!), when everybody else knows me as billynibbles.

MONITORIN& #71; YOUR SUCCESS

The software comes with a comprehensive statistics suite, showing percentages of e-mail turned back and the reasons for that. For example, today, I?ve received 45 e-mails. Four were on my friends list and were indeed from friends, seven had been spotted by the FirstAlert! database, nine by ?Bayesian? filtering methods*, twenty-four were identified as Spam by the other on-line databases and one was already on my personal blacklist. Hmmm, 89% Spam, I thought as much. <
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*Not sure about Bayesian, I believe it?s something to do with analysing the text content beyond looking for simple mentions of Viagra or willies ? perhaps someone could enlighten me. It sounds very impressive like camcorders with ?fuzzy logic? autofocus, or antivirus software that uses heuristic measures. As long as it?s an extra ?weapon?, so much the better anyway.

CONCLUSIO& #78;

I?m not saying this is the best, but if you?ve been used to Mailwasher, then paying out the extra to get the benefits of multiple accounts and stricter control of your e-mail, then MWP is the kiddie to try. As with Anti-Virus software, it?s more important that you?ve got SOME, rather than the best, which will always be subjective to a certain extent anyway.

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