The new MailWasher Pro FAQs

[rob1951]

What's with all the grumbling about USD10 p.a. for such a great product. Fact is they made an error with the original version "licensed for life". That has the ineviitable result that there's not enough cash to keep improving and addressing bugs.

Pro:2010 is so much improved that it is legitimate to call it a different product - and if you don't like paying $10, stick with the old.
And Pro:2010 isn't perfect, I've had a couple of issues but worst case only needed close and reopen to fix. But if we keep handing over $10 p.a. they'll keep working on the product and improving it.
My personal "wish list" so far is for a bit of speed optimisation - but look, we've got much improved filtering and that, after all, is the main reason for having MW, to kill the garbage but keep the good mail.

[stan_qaz]

It really isn't improved, it is a completely new program written in a different programming language from scratch.

The speed issues have been a priority for several beta cycles and a lot has been done to improve the speed. Still with today's spam and worse tomorrow's the old fast classification method that v6 and earlier used just wasn't as effective as it was last year. the new weighted spam evaluation is slower as all of the tools run on each message instead of the v6 method of just running one tool at a time until one hits. That is slower but far more accurate at tagging the mail correctly.

Still I'm sure there is more that could be done to improve speed but for now they feel that adding features and fixing bugs found by the new users is more important. Even after a couple years of beta testing there are unique situations that are cropping up where there are interactions with other programs or mail servers that need to be dealt with.

There are some things you can do to keep speed up, some simple some a bit more difficult but still doable.

1. Keep your blacklist under control, don't blacklist every spam you get, most of the addresses are one-time-use fake or stolen ones, save the blacklist for ones that you know are real.

2. Use one or two servers in the source of spam tool and make sure your Windows system is configured to use a fast DNS server. If you have slow DNS service you may want to go to just one server in the source of spam tool. Set the cache to 3 days.

3. Limit the number of lines you download, 80 is about the minimum I'd suggest and for me the sweet spot seems to be 200 lines. Sure 200 sounds like a lot but many messages have no real content in the first 150 or so lines, all formatting HTML sillyness. Yahoo groups message digests have no content in the first 250 or so lines!

4. If you use filters read the stickies on filtering and make sure you follow the optimization rules, a bit of tweaking doubled my filtering speed.

5. Male sure your account settings are optimal for your mail servers, caching and pipelining are both nice speed improvers.

6. Set your First Alert cache to at least 3 days.

7. Under the Settings - General - Performance set some of the options to improve speed. Use the low quality spinner, it looks just fine and with a bunch of messages spinning the high quality one is a hog. Use the "only display when check complete" option and you'll see a nice improvement, it drops all the overhead of tucking messages into the grid and sorting them while the check is in progress.

[Forest2010]

I would be perfectly OK with an annual renewal fee of $10 US, given the quality and usefulness of MailWasher Pro. I, personally, have tried other "similar" utilities, and I just have not found anything that I like as much as MailWasher Pro.

[alvern]

I run my Win XP Toolbar across the top of the screen and the top of Mailwasher Pro 2010 STILL goes under it and WILL NOT SIT BELOW it. Therefore Mailwasher CANNOT BE USED!!!!!!! PLEASE HELP

[rusticdog]

I run my Win XP Toolbar across the top of the screen and the top of Mailwasher Pro 2010 STILL goes under it and WILL NOT SIT BELOW it. Therefore Mailwasher CANNOT BE USED!!!!!!! PLEASE HELP

Yeap that's on the fix list, sorry we didn't get it done sooner. In the interim, rather than set MW maximised, you could resize the window to roughly the same size but in a better location.

[rusticdog]

Wait, if you maximise MailWasher doesn't it fit under the bar, then go File >> Exit >> reopen >> it should be in the right place ?

[stan_qaz]

I think that is what I had to do to get mine to behave properly.

[Elektra]

Do I have to uninstall 6.54 first or can I keep both versions installed in case I decide to uninstall the new one?

[anniebrion]

Do I have to uninstall 6.54 first or can I keep both versions installed in case I decide to uninstall the new one?

You can keep both installed at the same time

[Elektra]

Thank you. I will give it a try soon then.

[Hoov]

Two questions.
1. What happened to the statistics? I actually used it to improve the filtering.

2. Why do you still have a bounce option? Everything I have ever seen, bouncing an e-mail is just confirming an e-mail address.

[anniebrion]

Two questions.
1. What happened to the statistics? I actually used it to improve the filtering.

2. Why do you still have a bounce option? Everything I have ever seen, bouncing an e-mail is just confirming an e-mail address.

1. Stats are coming shortly.

2. Bounce should only be use to addresses you know are not forged ie an Ex-girlfriend/Ex-Boyfriend/Stalker etc... that you want to think you have deleted your address.

[stan_qaz]

Two questions.
2. Why do you still have a bounce option? Everything I have ever seen, bouncing an e-mail is just confirming an e-mail address.

Or worse helping a spammer mail-bomb someone they want to punish for fighting spam or a random innocent address stolen by some malware.

There are more things that can be done to keep the bounce from being abused, with any luck we'll see some of them in later versions of MW.

[Hoov]

1. Stats are coming shortly.

Thanks.

2. Bounce should only be use to addresses you know are not forged ie an Ex-girlfriend/Ex-Boyfriend/Stalker etc... that you want to think you have deleted your address.

This is such a small subgroup of the actual amount of spam, that I think the bounce should be bounced. Ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend should just be marked as spam and blacklisted. Stalker e-mail should always be given to the local LEO. Any commercial e-mail that is unwanted, first unsubscribe, and then mark as spam.

Which brings up something else. The report spam feature seems to be gone. Do you know why?

[anniebrion]

The report spam feature seems to be gone. Do you know why?

This is also high on the list to come in the future.