Return Bounce & Blacklist to the Ribbon/ Single Click Delete

[takiyon]

Mailwasher Pro 2010 is going backwards by removing the ability to add columns for Bouncing and Blacklisting. Placing the Bounce in the preview pane area requires the user to leave the list and hunt for where to click. Requiring a right click on the mouse for each Blacklist mark adds unnecessary additional actions to complete what was a simple action on the list when a button was provided. Also requiring a list to be opened to Blacklist an item increases the chance of erroneously clicking the wrong item on that list.

Returning the option of a Bounce and Blacklist button on the ribbon, so a single click is needed, will improve Mailwasher Pro 2010 significantly.

Other comments on changes:
1. Loss of single click Deletion- I could not find how to mark all emails for deletion. This is available in the earlier editions (I was using version 6.5.3). Without the option I have to individually mark each item for deletion which is time consuming and retrograde. Bring back a "Delete All Email" option.

2. Color choices for program: I am severely red/green colorblind. When I see red and green side by side in a program, as in the Inbox, I always have to worry that something may get lost in the wash. Allowing a color choice would be helpful.

3. Overall comment: I applaud improvements to any program. Mailwasher has a long history of doing what it does simply and easily. The changes mentioned above make using the program more complicated and less apt for the program to be used. It is understandable that not everyone wants so many choices on a ribbon. That is why having the option to add the missing buttons mentioned above was a good choice in 6.5.3. The new version seems fresher but it should not through out the good of 6.5.3 with the wash.

Thanks

[MrBill]

Mailwasher Pro 2010 is going backwards by removing the ability to add columns for Bouncing and Blacklisting. Placing the Bounce in the preview pane area requires the user to leave the list and hunt for where to click. Requiring a right click on the mouse for each Blacklist mark adds unnecessary additional actions to complete what was a simple action on the list when a button was provided. Also requiring a list to be opened to Blacklist an item increases the chance of erroneously clicking the wrong item on that list.

Returning the option of a Bounce and Blacklist button on the ribbon, so a single click is needed, will improve Mailwasher Pro 2010 significantly.

Bouncing is generally counterproductive, since most spammers forge either made-up bogus return addresses, or worse yet, the return address of some innocent third party. The legitimate uses for bouncing are very limited - so it makes sense for it to be available, but not prominent. I can imagine, for example, that you might have an aquaintance who bugs you with forwarded jokes and such constantly - you might want to bounce to him, to give the impression that your address had changed. Maybe he would take you off his list. But if you bounce all spam, you are simply contributing to the problem - adding messages to the workload of servers and to the inbox of non-spamming third parties.

Likewise, blacklisting is of limited usefulness, since most spam comes from one-use addresses which fill up your blacklist and will never be seen again (my blacklist is completely empty). It's available, for those few situations where some vendor refuses to remove you from his mailing list after being requested to do so. Using up a whole column for this purpose is a waste. This version of MailWasher Pro is simply reflecting the current reality that these two tools are no longer important in the fight against Spam.

1. Loss of single click Deletion- I could not find how to mark all emails for deletion. This is available in the earlier editions (I was using version 6.5.3). Without the option I have to individually mark each item for deletion which is time consuming and retrograde. Bring back a "Delete All Email" option.

You can select (highlight) all messages in the grid that you want to delete and click the trashcan icon. Several methods: select a message, press Ctrl-A (selects all messages in the grid); select a message, hold down the Shift key, press Down (or Up) until all the messages you want are selected; select a message, hold down Ctrl, click additional messages individually to add them to the selection. Then click the trashcan.

2. Color choices for program: I am severely red/green colorblind. When I see red and green side by side in a program, as in the Inbox, I always have to worry that something may get lost in the wash. Allowing a color choice would be helpful.

I agree the color choices available are extremely limited, and do not take into account the extremely common red/green color blindness condition. Hopefully this will be addressed soon.

[Sidewinder]

1. Loss of single click Deletion- I could not find how to mark all emails for deletion. This is available in the earlier editions (I was using version 6.5.3). Without the option I have to individually mark each item for deletion which is time consuming and retrograde. Bring back a "Delete All Email" option.
Thanks

You can hold the Ctrl key down and click on multiple msgs in the grid and then click on the Trash can icon and all will be marked for delete. You can also use the Shift key to select a range and the click the delete.

You can manage the shades of the grid colors using the pull down under Quick display. It might be of some help. The changes for the visually impaired are on the TBD list.

[stan_qaz]

You can also select all the e-mails using the Ctrl-A key combination once you have clicked on a message to activate the grid.

As has been said bouncing is no longer effective for most spam and it actually aids the spammer by allowing the spammer to pick a victim, steal their address and then have thousands of misdirected bounces pour into their inbox. For many mail services that overfills their box causing their legitimate mail to be bounced by their server and adding to the disruption the original bounces cause. Too some users are very aggravated by bounces and are starting to file abuse complaints against anyone sending them a bounce when their address is stolen. These complaints have caused several big ISPs to prevent a user from forging a bounce (it is a mail forgery and abuse under almost all ISP contracts) which is helping to reduce the forged bounce problem but prevents folks form faking one to a real address.

I have spent a lot of time, as have the folks at firetrust looking at ways to make the bounce safer to use by detecting the forged addresses and refusing to bounce them. That would be a wonderful option but technically it is nearly impossible to do perfectly. The compromise firetrust went with for now between completely removing the bounce (for customer safety) and leaving it the old way (considered somewhere between very bad and darned near evil by mail experts) is pretty good. There is some automatic detection stuff that could be done and hopefully we will see it someday, it is on the "think about" list though not the "to do" list at this point.

Blacklisting is another tool that is becoming less effective as time goes on, spammers have learned to deal with folks using blacklists so that they rarely catch a spam message. There is still some good to be gained from a blacklist both for non-spam as has been suggested but also by the use of wildcards to block entire domains that are often spammed from but that you rarely if ever see a real message from. See this post: http://forum.firetrust.com/viewtopic.ph ... 148#p24148

The way the spam tools add scores in the new MW is a huge improvement over the simple hit/miss operation of v6 and earlier versions, this was driven in large part by the spammers learning to bypass simple tools like blacklists and the Source of Spam tool. Using forged addresses gets past the blacklist and sending from cootie infested computers gets by the blacklist.

They even have found a way to turn the friends list to their advantage by stealing addresses off computers they manage to infect and then using them together to try to match a friend's list entry on the target computer! They have something in the works to combat that tactic and I'm hoping to see it available fairly soon.

I completely agree with you about the color choices being difficult, you might want to communicate that directly to firetrust in an e-mail and ask that they prioritize fixing it. They'd probably be happy to add you to the testing team so you could help evaluate the solution. They are actually pretty decent folks but just got distracted by other issues once they got the basic color thing working and didn't get back to it to deal with catering to folks with vision problems.

[rusticdog]

Just to be sure, you have tried the other colour choices listed under the Quick Display ?

I thought we'd provided a range that would more suit red/green colourblind users

[stan_qaz]

Options here:

quick1.png (28.59 KiB) Viewed 15358 times

[takiyon]

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. 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.

[rusticdog]

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. 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.

While we can appreciate how you use MailWasher, the reasoning above is solid and the bounce feature is no longer designed to be used in this manner. It's simply ineffective.


Any suggestions on alternate colours that would stand out ?

[stan_qaz]

I'm sure Atta has some stuff available to him but for others these are two good links on color picking.

Quick look at the problems:

http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/

Normal:


Problem Vision:



Fancy setup that lets you set a bunch of conditions for color viewing:

http://colorlab.wickline.org/colorblind/colorlab/

[takiyon]

Alternate Colors:
Yellow is one of the few colors red/green color blind people can be sure of. Avoid brown as it can be washed visually into the surrounding reds and greens. Strongly contrasting the colors used are helpful. Washed out hues are the worst. While not as common as red/green color blindness there is also a large number of blue/ green color blind people as well.

It is actually hard to say more about what colors work. Until it is pointed out by some one without colorblindness I don't even know what I missed.

The end of Bounce Control
Without the option to Bounce Mailwasher loses a major purpose. It still keeps dangerous emails a step away from my computer but it does not prevent repeats of that email. Eventually one of those will get through by sheer repetition. The ease that Mailwasher previously made the Bounce and Blackmail options available made repetitive and brute force hacking difficult.

As a newsletter editor for a national PC computer group I had often recommended Mailwasher to the readers. The feedback I received always noted the favorite features of Mailwasher were the two features being done away with, bouncing and blacklisting. What does Mailwasher Pro 2010 offer now other than an extra spam filter to the ones provided with the browsers?

As an aside, thanks to everyone for your responses. These forums make it easier to understand the development and use of programs.

[rusticdog]

With all due respect, bounce and blacklist are the two most ineffective features in the program. People 'feel' they serve a great purpose, but they really don't work. We aren't adding bounce back like the old version simply to give people warm fuzzies, and if they can't appreciate MailWasher beyond bouncing, then frankly there are better alteratives out there.

[stan_qaz]

Blacklisting isn't gone it is just moved to the right-click menu, if you use it effectively, that is only blacklisting real addresses or wildcards you will find after a week or so you never go back to it for days at a time.

The bounce is similar, how often do you get a bouncable spam where the bounce goes to the real sender? I've been tracking mine (very informally) and I'm sure that 90% of my spam is unbouncable forgeries. Of the remaining 10% I suspect most is also unbouncable but just not as obvious and not worth the time to sort out the stuff that is bouncable from the chaff. You can get a good feel for this by using spamcop.net to report your spam, they do a good job (with an extensive suite of analysis tools too much for a PC or non technical user to use effectively) of identifying forgeries.

If bouncing worked you'd bounce a couple e-mails from a spammer and never hear from them again. That isn't what happens since most every bounce of a spam goes astray.

What does work is spamcop.net reporting, you can set up a free account and enable Quick mode reporting that is very simple and requires none of the user interaction needed when submitting full reports. They are working on providing an enhanced reporting function in the new MW that will make that reporting and others much more flexible and simpler for the user.

[stan_qaz]

Rusticdog, this type of feeling about the blacklist is one of the reasons I'd really like to see some statistics readily visible in the blacklist editor and in the statistics reports when they are ready to ship.

1. Creation date of a blacklist entry.
2. Last date it matched a message.
3. Total number of messages it matched.

[takiyon]

If Mailwasher does not want Bouncing and Blacklisting don't include the feature. Making them more difficult to use just takes away from the original simplicity of using Mailwasher. The more complicated a program is to use the less likely it will be used. Eventually that program will lose its place in customer's computers. Bouncing and Blacklisting may now just be "feel good" options but they still are a major sell of Mailwasher to the general public. There is a reason Staples sells tons of those "easy" push buttons. The button does nothing but it feels good for the user to press it. Marketing is just as important as usage.

Like Stan-qaz said, show us some statistics and educate us before complicating/ taking away a favorite function of Mailwasher. Mailwasher has long been in my computer group's top ten favorite programs list. Complicating the program could bump it off the list. Most computer users don't understand all the ins and outs of computer programs. They just use what they believe fulfills their need. Bouncing and Blacklisting is perceived as fulfilling needs. Perception over function can keep Mailwasher a favorite. By being kept in use Mailwasher will then fulfill its desired purpose.

[stan_qaz]

I just can't understand your position on bouncing, it actively aids the spammers.

Doing harm to another person just so you feel better about yourself is not justifiable.