[CH] RE Mailwasher

Byron (byronbromley@tellink.net)
Wed, 15 Sep 2004 20:02:25 -0400 

Scott

FWIW

I use mailwasher,   my 5 year attempt with using IE/OE methods increased 
my spam from 80 the day I signed on the a new server to over 600.  ( 
plus several $100 with other spam blockers)

Reporting to spam cop or spamhaus amounts to a waste of $$, 

Reporting the UCE@FTC.GOV  is almost as useless.

After using Mailwasher my spam went from over 600 a day to about 12 that 
gets auto deleted, black listed and bounced.

At least between Mozilla and  Mailwasher 99.99% of my computer time is 
mine, not spammers.

Another thing I like about Mailwasher over Mozilla,  Is I can delete a 
message at server.  If I recieve a message from someone I don't know 
with a big attachment I can delete at server.  That doesn't work with IE.

If you don't like Neil Boltons methods, then maybe you can pay Billy 
Gate$ the 1/2 billion $ to block open relays in his server programs.  
Thats where 99% of this crap is coming from.

2/3rds of my spams are from MSN.COM  or Hotmail.com

Just my 2¢
L.B.

At 08:05 AM 9/9/2004, Yvonne B wrote:

>>Not sure if it really helps or not, but Mailwasher will bounce your spam 
>>back to the sender, and make it look like you don't have a valid address. 
>>FWIW. (Although the return address on spam is usually forged anyway.)
>  
>

This feature is one of the main reasons that many mail administrators would 
reserve a special room in hell for Nick Bolton, the developer of the program.

This is one of those features that's intended to really make you feel 
good.  You've put something over on a spammer.  The only problem is that 
it's a lie and it abuses innocent people.

First of all, the reply address in the spam you get is almost always 
forged.  When it's not, it's usually someone that the spammers wants to 
take revenge on.  So the spammer will never see the bounce.  So at best 
you've accomplished nothing and, at worst, you've helped mailbomb someone.

Second, even if they did see the bounce, unless they're a complete idiot, 
they'd know that a bounce hours or days later is not a real bounce and what 
you've really done is confirm to him that your address is good.

Next, getting back to those bounces you sent, where do you think they 
go?  Well, if Mailwasher didn't alter the mail, all those bad addresses 
would eventually come back to you and you'd know that the product was a 
fraud. So what it does is alter the return address to 
postmaster@yourisp.  So they end up with most of the spam you bounce.  Most 
mail administrators end up having to write special filters to keep their 
critical contact accounts free of this garbage.

People have pleaded with Bolton for years to drop this feature, but it's 
such a great selling point for his program that he won't do it even though 
he admits it doesn't work and never did.

Having said that, the program has some nice features if you stay away from 
the bounce button. I've looked at it because some clients were interested, 
but I think the approach is fundamentally flawed.  It's dependent upon 
having mailwasher look at the mail on the server and then asking you to 
confirm mailwasher's decisions.  Having done that, you then fire up your 
mail program and download whatever remains of your mail.

What I've found is that once you get over a couple of hundred emails a day, 
it's just too much bother even on a dialup.  It's faster to download the 
mail and process it on your computer.  There are a number of excellent 
programs that will sit in front of your email program and perform all the 
filtering activities using the same block lists and other methods with no 
manual intervention.



                                           Scott Peterson