Firetrust Support Forums

I'm trying to figure out how exactly auto delete works and so far haven't figured it out.

I have my email filters set up to auto delete black listed emails. Every time MWP gets done checking email, some blacklisted items are deleted immediately and some are listed in the icon down below "Marked For Auto Delete". Some emails seems to stay Marked for Auto Delete through multiple Mail Check session and the only way I can get rid of some of them is to clear the message list and recheck email. But then, some emails make it through that and just hang out in my message list for a day or two, then disappear into the recycle bin at some point. The problem with this behavior is it keeps spam in my inbox until MWP decides it's time to finally go through with the auto delete. I have my mail evaluation set at -200 and many of the emails that get marked for auto delete and then get stuck in the message list are -300 or less.

v7.12.67 Windows 11

There are a few methods of auto-delete, all running separate from each other, which could be why you are seeing inconsistency. The behaviours too aren't quite straight forward.


Blacklist : Under Settings >> Spam Tools >> Blacklist >> Options >> you can set auto-delete here, this will automatically delete every time a sender matching your blacklist is found.

Custom Filters >> Under Settings >> Spam Tools >> Custom Filters >> you can set an individual filter to auto-delete messages that match.

Spam Rating >> Under Settings >> Spam Tools >> Spam Ratings >> this is the tricky one where each of the Spam Tools assigns a score, and messages are automatically removed if they meet the threshold.
You will see you can assign those scores, say setting a blacklist match to -200, and set auto-delete to kick in at -300. In this situation it would mean a message would need to be tagged by another Spam Tool (e.g. the Learning) to take it past that -300.
The Learning assigns a value from -149 through to +149. So if you want to auto-delete based off learning as well, then around -120 is a good place to set this.


For behaviour :
Auto-delete will only impact new messages when MailWasher does a Check Mail. Messages already loaded in the grid will not be auto-deleted.
We do this to make it easier to 'test' as you can make a change to a setting, see the results, but not lose those emails in case something wasn't quite right.

Say you have your blacklist set to auto-delete and you get an email from [email protected], you don't want these so you blacklist the address.
Each time MailWasher checks for new mail from that point on, new messages from [email protected] will be removed, but the specific email you blacklisted, that is already showing in the list of emails will not.
Likewise if you create a new Custom Filter to auto-delete, go back to the Inbox screen and see it has tagged all your emails, it will not have performed these deletions.

Restarting MailWasher, or clearing the message list and reloading (C then Y on the keyboard) resets the list, so the auto-deletes would then run as expected as these messages are considered new.

With that long winded part out of the way, now to the actual problem.

Is it possible some of these emails you are seeing were not flagged for auto-delete when first loaded by MailWasher ?
And what is the 'Status' of these messages that are showing, are they matching the filter name you have set for autodelete, or does it read something else.

Great explanation and details are awesome!

The messages are marked as Spam and Blacklist in the Status column. Sounds possible that freshly marked messages could be a contributing factor occasionally, but I don't see the behavior you described. When I mark something as Blacklisted, every instance of it is automatically marked Blacklisted in the message list and when I Wash Mail, they all disappear into the recycle bin.

When I click C, I get the prompt to verify clearing message list. That works. When I click Y, nothing happens. Does that reset work in the background with no notifications, or should I be seeing some indication that the list has been reset?

privateone wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:23 am

Great explanation and details are awesome!

The messages are marked as Spam and Blacklist in the Status column. Sounds possible that freshly marked messages could be a contributing factor occasionally, but I don't see the behavior you described. When I mark something as Blacklisted, every instance of it is automatically marked Blacklisted in the message list and when I Wash Mail, they all disappear into the recycle bin.

Right yeah, I missed talking about pressing Wash Mail. Doing that will perform the actions tagged on the existing list of emails as well.

For messages marked as Spam, then they are only getting tagged by the Learning, so can only be auto-deleted through the Settings >> Spam Tools >> Spam Ratings option.

If you right click on your column headings, and from the list select to display the TOTAL column. This value represents the score of the email, so you can see what kind of values these messages are getting and compare that to your auto-delete setting here.

privateone wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:23 am

When I click C, I get the prompt to verify clearing message list. That works. When I click Y, nothing happens. Does that reset work in the background with no notifications, or should I be seeing some indication that the list has been reset?

Just my poor description. Pressing C brings up the prompt, pressing Y confirms the prompt. So part of the same process.