Comments from new paid subscriber
- Ratfancy
- Student Sheep
Post
Comments from new paid subscriber
Just wondering how long it takes for MailWasher to "learn". I'm seeing way too much spam slipping through, so my confidence level is low after five days of usage. I have to go through each and every email so that I don't have good emails marked spam, and obvious spam marked good. Silverdating, VISA offers, obvious Netflix fishing emails, and many many obvious fishing emails are marked good. Will this improve? How long will I have to be this scrupulous?
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rusticdog
- Firetrust Monkey
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Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
Hi there
It's not about time rather MailWasher having good data. How many emails do you typically get a day ?
MailWasher does treat emails with more uncertainty early on, while the good/bad lists build up.
It's not about time rather MailWasher having good data. How many emails do you typically get a day ?
MailWasher does treat emails with more uncertainty early on, while the good/bad lists build up.
- TWHGM
- It begins with a single step
Post
Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
That has been my biggest disappointment, that it does not "learn" and I am still getting tons of spam. I realize that spammers change domains on a daily basis. But you think it would figure out that anything with the same subjects is junk. The spam filter tools are not explained. I would like to know which should be set to high numbers and which to low.
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rusticdog
- Firetrust Monkey
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Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
You shouldn't need to change any of the Learning numbers. Under Settings >> General >> Checking Mail >> set the Spam Throttle to 500 lines per email, that will give MailWasher more email content to work with and would help accuracy.TWHGM wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:28 pmThat has been my biggest disappointment, that it does not "learn" and I am still getting tons of spam. I realize that spammers change domains on a daily basis. But you think it would figure out that anything with the same subjects is junk. The spam filter tools are not explained. I would like to know which should be set to high numbers and which to low.
- Ratfancy
- Student Sheep
Post
Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
My filter to delete senders "newsletter@" is not working. How to make it work?
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rusticdog
- Firetrust Monkey
Post
I assume you have the filter set to :
If the FROM, CONTAINS, PLAIN TEXT
newsletter@
Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
I asked in the other thread that you commented if you can post a screenshot or more details of the filter.
I assume you have the filter set to :
If the FROM, CONTAINS, PLAIN TEXT
newsletter@
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Digerati
- Microsoft MVP
- Location: Nebraska, USA
Post
I certainly wish it was so easy but the bad guys are not stupid. In fact, they are very cleaver, constantly making changes to thwart and stay 1 step ahead of such learning tools, and to make their emails appear totally legitimate to the detection algorithms, and to us humans too.
It is a difficult, if not impossible balance to tag each and every spam as spam without tagging some legitimate emails as spam (false positives). And for many, including me, having a spam blocker incorrectly tag legitimate emails as bad is a worse offense.
For example, if you are a gmail user (even if you use MailWasher or an email client to access your gmail emails), you need to visit your gmail spam folder directly every 3 weeks because I assure you, there will be legitimate emails in there among the 100s of spam.
I say every 3 weeks because Google automatically deletes purges the spam folder of tagged emails every 30 days.
It is because "false positives" are so common, you will frequently see new contacts advise us to check our spam folders for their emails. Why do that if properly tagging emails (one way or the other) was so easy?
It is important to note too, how did the spammers get your email address? It is likely you gave it to someone who then gave it to someone who gave (or sold) it to the spammers. Or your computer was infected and your email address stolen. Or one of your contacts had their computer hacked. Or one of your contacts forwarded a joke to a 100 people and one of their computers was hacked.
Over the years, I have tried just about every spam filter/blocker out there. From free to commercial, from Google/Gmail to that provided by my ISP (Cox). And I keep coming back to MailWasher. No, it is not perfect. But if perfection was possible, spam would have been eliminated years ago and there would not be dozens of spam filters out there.
FOR ME - I have 6 email accounts from my ISP and Gmail that I receive 50 - 60 emails sent to everyday. MailWasher Pro makes it simple to organize, sort, delete those I don't need to keep, and keep those I want to keep - all from one inbox without worrying I might accidently download onto my computer something malicious.
And since I have set filters to name and color-code all the legitimate emails I regularly get, MailWasher Pro makes it simple to spot tagged spam, but also emails that were not tagged as spam but were not tagged by one of my filters too. Those "exceptions" are then easy for me to manage manually for keeping, deleting, or marked for learning.
Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom is NOT Free!
Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018
Heat is the bane of all electronics!
─────────────────────
Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
If it was as easy as you suggest, spam would have been defeated and eliminated 20 years ago.That has been my biggest disappointment, that it does not "learn" and I am still getting tons of spam.
I certainly wish it was so easy but the bad guys are not stupid. In fact, they are very cleaver, constantly making changes to thwart and stay 1 step ahead of such learning tools, and to make their emails appear totally legitimate to the detection algorithms, and to us humans too.
It is a difficult, if not impossible balance to tag each and every spam as spam without tagging some legitimate emails as spam (false positives). And for many, including me, having a spam blocker incorrectly tag legitimate emails as bad is a worse offense.
For example, if you are a gmail user (even if you use MailWasher or an email client to access your gmail emails), you need to visit your gmail spam folder directly every 3 weeks because I assure you, there will be legitimate emails in there among the 100s of spam.
I say every 3 weeks because Google automatically deletes purges the spam folder of tagged emails every 30 days. It is because "false positives" are so common, you will frequently see new contacts advise us to check our spam folders for their emails. Why do that if properly tagging emails (one way or the other) was so easy?
It is important to note too, how did the spammers get your email address? It is likely you gave it to someone who then gave it to someone who gave (or sold) it to the spammers. Or your computer was infected and your email address stolen. Or one of your contacts had their computer hacked. Or one of your contacts forwarded a joke to a 100 people and one of their computers was hacked.
Over the years, I have tried just about every spam filter/blocker out there. From free to commercial, from Google/Gmail to that provided by my ISP (Cox). And I keep coming back to MailWasher. No, it is not perfect. But if perfection was possible, spam would have been eliminated years ago and there would not be dozens of spam filters out there.
FOR ME - I have 6 email accounts from my ISP and Gmail that I receive 50 - 60 emails sent to everyday. MailWasher Pro makes it simple to organize, sort, delete those I don't need to keep, and keep those I want to keep - all from one inbox without worrying I might accidently download onto my computer something malicious.
And since I have set filters to name and color-code all the legitimate emails I regularly get, MailWasher Pro makes it simple to spot tagged spam, but also emails that were not tagged as spam but were not tagged by one of my filters too. Those "exceptions" are then easy for me to manage manually for keeping, deleting, or marked for learning.
Bill (AFE7Ret) Freedom is NOT Free!
Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018Heat is the bane of all electronics!
─────────────────────
- Ratfancy
- Student Sheep
Post
Newletter filter not working
My "newsletter@" filter is not working - any ideas? Thanks!
- newsletter.JPG (65.68 KiB) Viewed 6276 times
- newsletter filter.JPG (83.19 KiB) Viewed 6276 times
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rusticdog
- Firetrust Monkey
Post
Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
OK, that looks good. So it's possible the FROM field is encoded.
When encoded the text will look a little like gibberish. MailWasher runs the filters over the text before being decoded. What you see in the Email Header section you posted is in the decoded state as well.
If you click on the Source tab, and look for the line in the header that starts with FROM. Does it read like the above, or does it an odd mix of other characters.
You could also go into Settings >> Spam Tools >> Blacklist >> click the option Wildcard Expression >> in the field provided enter newsletter@* >> click Add. That will blacklist these kinds of addresses.
When encoded the text will look a little like gibberish. MailWasher runs the filters over the text before being decoded. What you see in the Email Header section you posted is in the decoded state as well.
If you click on the Source tab, and look for the line in the header that starts with FROM. Does it read like the above, or does it an odd mix of other characters.
You could also go into Settings >> Spam Tools >> Blacklist >> click the option Wildcard Expression >> in the field provided enter newsletter@* >> click Add. That will blacklist these kinds of addresses.
- RJami1
- It begins with a single step
Post
Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
I'm curious how long it takes MailWasher to "learn". After five days of use, my confidence level is low due to far too much spam slipping through. I have to go through every email to avoid having good emails marked as spam and obvious spam marked as good. Silverdating, VISA offers, obvious Netflix fishing emails, and a plethora of other obvious fishing emails have been marked as good. Will this get better? How long will I have to be so meticulous?
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AlphaCentauri
- Guardian Gecko
- Contact:
Post
Re: Comments from new paid subscriber
Agree with RusticDog. If the part of the email you are trying to filter says "base64," you will have to filter for the encoded string, not the part that actually displays. You CAN do that, it just takes more effort.
There are websites that will let you code/decode base 64. The important thing to know it that it will encode 3-character strings. So for instance, if you have "ere" "here" or "there," the part that encodes "ere" will be different since the groups of three characters will be broken into different groups in each.
You will need to make three filters to get all possible codes, and you should probably drop the first and last characters, as they will vary wildly depending on what characters come before and after the code you're going to filter for. So to look for "newsletter," you may end up filtering for "wslette" with three different variations, as "newslette" "ewsletter" and "wsletters"
There are websites that will let you code/decode base 64. The important thing to know it that it will encode 3-character strings. So for instance, if you have "ere" "here" or "there," the part that encodes "ere" will be different since the groups of three characters will be broken into different groups in each.
You will need to make three filters to get all possible codes, and you should probably drop the first and last characters, as they will vary wildly depending on what characters come before and after the code you're going to filter for. So to look for "newsletter," you may end up filtering for "wslette" with three different variations, as "newslette" "ewsletter" and "wsletters"