Return Bounce & Blacklist to the Ribbon/ Single Click Delete

[takiyon]

Like I said before, I use Bounce to send the message to the emailer that the email address they tried sending their advertising to is non-existent. I rarely need it for mass spammers. I don't look to hurt the hapless user whose email address was waylaid for spam. Perhaps a program inside Mailwasher can detect mass email and interrupt the bounce while still allowing it for general use. I am not a programmer so I would have no clue how to do that.

Again I ask, without bouncing and blacklisting what function does Mailwasher serve over the browsers? I am not trying to give Mailwasher a hard time. As a general computer user with just enough knowledge to get me out of some trouble I don't see what Mailwasher offers. Like I said about perception. Mailwasher had originally sold itself on bouncing and blacklisting. If these functions are archaic show me what else Mailwasher offers over the browsers to justify the extra step in reading emails. I have a history of promoting Mailwasher and would like to continue but I need to answer the question of why use it in its present form.

[stan_qaz]

First off all of the other spam tools that MW offers that are either missing entirely or present in a more limited form in your choice of mail programs.

The prime example from my use would be the filters I have a filter at the bottom of my stack called "unfiltered" it catches every message that one of my other filters does not catch and correctly classify. It doesn't see much use, out of 8,000 some recent e-mails it caught two, all the rest were caught and properly grouped by my other filters. Have you ever fed Thunderbird or Outlook 8,000 messages in one mail-check, it isn't pretty and without powerful grouping and sorting based on message internals it is nearly impossible to deal with that volume of mail in a timely manner.

One of my favorite filters in v6 is my bogus bounce filter that lets me collect all my bounces, challenge response, anti-virus and other like messages into one batch and send them all off to spamcop.net with as an abuse complaint. Try that from a mail client, even with the Thunderbird Spamcopper extension it will eat your entire day. In v6 MW it eats about half an hour of my time and about an hour of clock time, in v 2010 I'll have to see how it goes, checking will be slower but scanning the messages to confirm the spam will be faster and reporting promises to be far faster.

The wildcard list I posted for the blacklist hits a lot of stuff, I don't award a lot of points for that compared to the filters but it does add 50 points to messages scored as neutral by my filters.

The source of spam tool hits a good percentage of my spam messages, again it adds some points to neutral filtered messages that come from spammy servers.

First Alert does me some good on my first mail check of the day and a bit on later ones. For someone not checking and processing spam every five minutes all day every day it is a lot more effective, come to that so are the source of spam servers above.

I have some issues with the present implementation of the friends list as it is too easily fooled by forged headers, that is scheduled to improve and I'll give it a higher points total when the fix is available. In the mean time I back it up with a filter that protects me from forged messages with friends addresses stuffed into them.

Then you get to the security issues that MW gives you absolute protection from, nothing MW downloads can either attack your computer or activate any of the other nastiness that it can in a mail client. Sure you can turn off many of the features of your mail client and get some protection but in most cases folks add a bypass to the security settings for friends, one forged message with a friend's address tucked in there and you are wide open.

[takiyon]

Thanks for the info. Your response shows me the invisible work Mailwasher does. The general user neither sees that or understands it usually. That is why I don't offer friends a bypass. Too often they remind me why snopes.com is such a useful site and the gullibility of most users. There is a reason why Nigerians can find so many friends in the states.

I still fall back on my perception argument. All the things you say happen in Mailwasher wonderfully behind the scenes. Adding a visible meter or counter to show Mailwasher's behind the scene actions will greatly improve understanding of what it does to the uninitiated.

[stan_qaz]

Things are still in the early stages, it took a couple years to get where they are today with solid underpinnings and an extensible architecture that they can build on. I expect to see a lot of additional functions and features coming along fairly quickly, plenty of bug fixes already here or in the works too.

The auto-updater new in v 2010 is going to be a huge help with that! Click, Click and in under a minute on a quick connection you are on the latest version.

[rusticdog]

So how would this look for you takiyon ?

[rusticdog]

New version has now been released that has Yellow as an available colour in the Quick Display

[mcullet]

The available colors are still green and red. Additional color choices would be helpful.

As for anti-bounce and blacklist responses: Sending bounced mail and blacklisting is the core reason I use Mailwasher. My email rarely contains mass spam because I cut it off early by not doing all the things that divulge my address. (my highlight) What I do get, and used Mailwasher for, was to block the few pieces from direct emailers that come through that I did not want. These are. like the response to my post stated, businesses that refuse to take me off their mailing list after I ask to be removed. Making blocking more difficult takes Mailwasher's purpose away. I already have a delete, junk, and spam options with my email browser. I needed Mailwasher for blacklisting and bouncing. I'll give the new Mailwasher a try but I foresee my staying with the prior version.

Hi takiyon (nice handle - god I'm such a geek)

Most of what I write might already be known to you - but not others. So please understand that I'm not trying to speak down to you (anyone) but to give info and context that may be of practical assistance and maybe help correct some misconceptions.

Thanks for your well considered comments - including one regarding why some people liked / got / purchased MWP (features - bouncing and blacklisting). I suspect the ability to bounce and report spammers was one of the reason I began using MW years and years ago ... maybe it's a common thing? I vaguely recall feeling as if I was somehow fighting back against spammers. Until then I felt helpless and powerless - neither were especially 'good' feelings. Back then, (dinosaurs were all kitted out with the latest iPhone), spam mail was mostly annoying, some might have contained the odd virus and by comparison to today, were relatively few in volume and relatively low tech (internal coding / sophistication).

As internet usage increased (it's now considered a basic utility / right), and technology (hardware. software and wetware) advanced / evolved - so to have the techniques used by criminal spammers / scammers.

I have no doubt that you do apply safe internet practices to, among other things, reduce your spam. (This subject is already covered on the forum - I think - and if not, well worthy of inclusion.) But, despite our best efforts, criminals have and extraordinary repertoire of tools and techniques to get you. I need to be very careful here because I don't want to overly stat my case nor give aid to the 'enemy'. If you used an email address to join this (any) forum, or responded to any request made by a legitimate company for feedback - almost anything - even if you used disposable email addresses (which I do recommend for everyone BTW), or visited any site on the internet ... then yes, scammers can get precisely what they need to get to you. While we sleep, criminal use code (similar to those used by Google) to sift through the web and collect data - mostly email addresses but they can get whatever they want.

If you use the web to order a pizza from your favourate pizza place then - sadly, your info may have been stolen - either because the pizza site's website was hijacked (quite a common problem), or someone was cruising around with gear to decrypt wireless transmissions (lots of methods). It still depresses me that many people apply wireless encryption and have excellent hardware firewalls, but never think to change the default admin user name and password. Right now, if I wanted too, I could get into about 8 'secured' wireless systems near me because they have not changed default settings on their hardware. Recently I advised a well-known New York restaurant that their website had been hijacked and was being used as a spam server (at least). Among a slew of things, they forgot to change default settings to their webserver and operating system (windows, linux - and apache - and MySQL etc).

Many people don't know that fake sites (almost indistinguishable to the genuine ones without using forensic tools), drop packages onto your system the moment you pass by a page - drive-by downloads etc.

Now before we all get super-paranoid, your risk exposure is closely linked to your browsing behaviour and system security. If you don't have a good hardware firewall or use free AV (antivirus) protection and then surf weirdo porn sites or pirate sites or hacker sites, well of course you increase your exposure to risk. Turn off security (like one of my kids did) and your nakedly are exposed.

My point is that your comment about safe practices (not divulging your email address) is really important and it's sound. But it's by no means fool-proof. (I might take a closer look at the forum to see what's here and whether it may need a touch-up - RD?)

Secondly, whatever someone's motive was to try MWP or buy the product, the threats and criminal behaviours and technology have all evolved over time. MWP (all IT security) has likewise (and necessarily) evolved too. Some of these changes 'feel wrong' (if they relate to the reason you originally bought the program) but this is not the same as saying it's less effective. In truth, it's far and away a superior tool - whether or not it looks like a prince or a frog. Please be patient.

Thirdly, there are ways to fight back against spammer / scammers. BUT only ever do this safely which by necessity means that you need to work with well established, highly skilled groups. It takes a lot of effort and time - no small investment - and if you are successful, no-one other than your professional colleagues ever know. Hopefully the criminals never know - otherwise they adapt.

Finally, MWP is by far the most effective front-line email anti-spam / security tool available. (I know because I paid for and tested all I could lay my hands on - including freebies too: it's kinda required given what I and other do). I came across Firetrust when it first began - and not only is the company extraordinarily competent and ethical, their here to help - not to make a fortune. That has not changed. Forget freebies - might as well open your front door.

I am not an employee of Firetrust and have no connection to the company or anyone here other than that of a happy user and fellow forum member - and beta tester - and for the free beer.

@ takyon - Feel free to PM me and I'd be happy to speak privately with you.

[stan_qaz]

Don't forget the main point of exposure for e-mail addresses today, you send an e-mail to a friend and they already have or get a virus, that virus collects all the addresses it finds on that computer and sends them back to the spammer. There is absolutely nothing that you can do to prevent this from happening except not to send e-mail to others.

For an example, I do all of the above stuff with my mail and I still get spam to addresses that have never been used except to talk to one person. Mom is on about her fifth address she uses to contact me, she keeps getting viruses and they get the new e-mail address I gave her to contact me with. I've turned this to my advantage, when I get a spam to her dedicated address I know I have to go over and clean out her Windows system. I'm pretty happy with this, I used to spend a couple hours a week trying to keep her Windows system clean, now I just ignore it until I start getting fresh spam.

Same for a few friends that have shown bad computer security practices over the years, they get a custom address and I change it once they hace cootie-cleaned their computers.

I do the same for Amazon and ebay too, all too often a seller will be using an infested Windows box and as soon as your amazon or ebay contact address gets passed to them you start getting spam. A quick report to Amazon or ebay and the vendor usually helps and once the order is complete I give Amazon or ebay a new contact address.


Even more fun by the spammers, they use the addresses they harvested to try and trick folks relying on the friends list for filtering. Got to watch for that as you sure don't want to get fooled by such a simple trick as a forged return address and let the message in to do its damage or blacklist a friend who had their address stolen off a third party's computer.