Question: How does MailWasher work?

MailWasher works directly with your email server, exactly like your email program does. But there is one important difference: you can tell MailWasher to delete a message at the server, without downloading it - or you can bounce an email back to the sender so that it looks as though your address is not valid.

MailWasher retrieves information about all the emails on the server. With that information (some of which is also processed by MailWasher) you can decide what to do with each individual email - download, delete, or bounce back.

If you check your account with MailWasher first, you can delete or bounce the emails you do not want. Then, when you use your email program, it downloads only the remaining emails, those that you want to read.

MailWasher can be thought of as a "first line of defence" which can weed out junk, large wasteful attachments, and potentially harmful viruses.

Question: How do I start using MailWasher?

To begin using MailWasher, here's all you need to do.

When someone sends you an email it is first received by your Internet Service Providers email server. It is held there until you start up your email program, (Outlook Express, or some other program) which then looks on this server and downloads all your email, spam or not.

What Mailwasher does is to log onto that email server and download just a small text only portion of each email. This lets you look at each one and see if it is a spam or a real email. You can then choose to delete or keep the email and when you use your email program to download your email, all the spam has already been deleted.

Normally this is how you would use Mailwasher with your email program,

* Open MailWasher
* Click, Check Mail,
* Mark your email for deletion or keeping,
* Click Process Mail,
* Then you open, (or Mailwasher Opens ) your email program,
* Click Send/Receive in there to check for new mail like normal.

Just leave MailWasher open to collect all your email, and turn off automatic checking in your email program http://support.firetrust.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&k... this will ensure MailWasher gets all your email first so you can remove the junk before it gets to your computer.

One of the advantages of MailWasher is it allows you to check all your email at the server before it gets to your computer, letting you remove all unwanted email (spam, newsletters, junk, viruses) so they never get to your computer in the first place.

If you watch the video on the home page (which is the same as the animated video when you first start MailWasher), it shows you how to train mailwasher and after a few times it becomes very good at recognizing spam. You just need to classify your email as 'spam' or 'good' to begin with.

Question: What is spam?

Spam is another word for unsolicited junk email.

Question: Which operating systems does MailWasher run on?

Windows 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, XP Pro, Vista and Windows 7.

Question: Does it run under Linux?

Yes, if you install Wine for Linux it will run just fine.

Question: What are the minimum requirements to run MailWasher?

4 Mb of RAM, 4Mb of disk space, and an Internet connection.

Question: Which email programs does MailWasher work with?

MailWasher works independently of other email programs so it doesn't matter which one you use.

Question: Which mail protocols does MailWasher support?

Only POP3 and IMAP is supported. Most webmail providers offer POP3 and/or IMAP access such as Hotmail and GMail

Question: How can I download MailWasher?

On the home page, click on download. A box will pop up and ask if you want to save to disk or run from location. Click on save to disk and press ok. A new box will appear asking where you want to download it to. Select your location and click save. MailWasher is 7 Megabytes in size and takes approximately 10 minutes with a 56k modem to download or about 5 seconds with a DSL connection.

Question: How do I install MailWasher?

Double click on the downloaded file and the installation will begin. It is a very easy installation and when finished will ask if you want to start the program file. If you click ok, MailWasher will start and ask if you want to import your existing email account or manually add one. Once this is done, MailWasher will check that account for email.

Question: Does MailWasher run in the background?

If you have a permanent connection to the internet, you can set MailWasher to automatically check mail at a pre-determined interval via the tools, options menu.

Question: Which email client will MailWasher start up?

MailWasher will use your default email client.

Question: Why do I get an error when trying to start my email client? Or, how do I specify a default email client?

You may not have specified a default e-mail client.

To change this, right click on the Internet Explorer short-cut on your desktop >> go to Properties >> click Programs at the top >> and select your default e-mail program from here.

Question: How do I switch off automatic checking in my email program?

The following are instructions for the more common email programs.

Outlook Express
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu.

Uncheck the options labeled Send and receive messages at startup and Check for new messages every ( ) minute(s).

Outlook
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu.

Click on the Internet E-mail tab.

Uncheck the option labeled Check my local network connections for new mail every ( ) minute(s).

Question: I'm having problems with MailWasher connecting to the internet, what can I do?

Error: Could not connect to the internet, or DNS failed.

1. Go to the control panel, click on 'Internet options' and then go to the 'connections' tab and make sure 'Always dial my default connection' is selected.

2. If you're running a version of Nortons Antivirus earlier than 2002, you'll notice a 'nortons reference' in the POP account settings. It will look like this - 'pop3.norton.antivirus'. Remove the Norton references from the account info and just use your normal POP connection details. This won't affect your system security as MailWasher only checks messages on the server in text mode so viruses and scripts can't be run. Nortons AV will catch anything else when you download the email through your e-mail client.

3. Make sure you can receive POP3 emails. There are other Internet connection protocols available but which MailWasher does not support at present, although POP3 is by far the most common.

Question: What are my email settings?

To successfully setup MailWasher you'll need your email settings. MailWasher will import these automatically from your email program.

Question: Can I import my existing account in to MailWasher?

Yes, click on the Tools menu, then the accounts menu. There you will see a button to import your existing account.

Question: What are my POP and SMTP settings?

To successfully setup MailWasher you'll need your email settings. MailWasher will import these automatically from your email program.

Question: Why does MailWasher not import the password from my account?

Your email password is encrypted and has to be entered again by you.

Question: How many accounts may I have?

This version of Mailwasher only supports one account. If you wish to have multiple accounts, then upgrade to MailWasher Pro at www.firetrust.com

Question: How do I stop automatically checking my account?

In the tools menu>>accounts>>properties box, remove the tick from 'Include this account in default mail check'.

Question: Can I use Hotmail with MailWasher?

Yes you can, see http://www.firetrust.com/en/hotmail_pop3 for settings.

Question: Can I use Yahoo with MailWasher?

Yes, to set up a POP account with Yahoo go to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/pop/

Question: Can I use MSN with MailWasher?

Yes you can, see http://www.firetrust.com/en/hotmail_pop3 for details

Question: What does the 'Enable bouncing of messages from this account' mean?

If you don't want to use the bounce feature, you can disable it by unticking this box for each account. It is ticked to bounce by default.

Question: What is APOP?

This is a POP3 setting that encrypts your username and password when checking your mail - not all internet providers support this, but it will probably be widely used eventually.

Question: What do the 'Advanced bouncing options' mean?

* Use remote SMTP server only : the system performs an MX DNS look-up on the hostname of the destination e-mail address. If the MX look-up fails, the bounce is aborted. For each MX record returned, the system attempts to send the message directly to that SMTP server. If any server returns a permanent failure code (5xx), the bounce is aborted.

* Use local SMTP server only: the system sends a bounce message through the SMTP server specified in the account options.

* Use remote SMTP server with local fallback: The system performs a remote SMTP send as described above. If there are MX servers present but none were available to connect to, the system performs a local SMTP send instead. If there are MX servers present and all of them return a temporary error code (4xx), the system performs a local SMTP send. Otherwise the bounce is aborted.

Question: What does the status column mean?

The status column shows the analysis of an email by MailWasher as normal, probable or possible spam, possible or probably virus or virus. This is also where a custom filter status is shown.

Question: How can I change the order of the columns?

In the tools menu, click on Option. In the General tab, the Column Order box will let you select or deselect and change the column order of the columns.

Question: How can I classify my incoming emails by sorting them?

Click on any of the column headers to sort them by that header.

Question: What does the 'tell a friend email' look like?

Your friends will receive an email like below.

Hi (your friend's name)

I just wanted to let you know that I'm using a free program called MailWasher, it's designed to keep out unsolicited commercial email (otherwise known as spam) and email viruses from your computer!

MailWasher allows you to preview and delete emails before you download them, like spam or emails with large attachments or viruses and worms. You never have to download bad emails again.

It's had over 7 million downloads which shows how useful and popular it is

(your own message here)

It's free and easy to download and use, so do it now! Just click on the link below:

http://www.mailwasher.net/download.php

Or go to http://www.mailwasher.net/ to find out more information about it.

Kind regards,
(your name)

Question: How does MailWasher bounce messages?

Bouncing makes it looks as if your email address is not valid. Great for letting your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/ wife/husband/friend think your email address doesn't exist anymore and that you're no longer contactable.

MailWasher uses an algorithm to determine the best route to send the bounced message back (from, reply to, return path) and actually sends the bounce back via your ISP's postmaster, so it looks exactly like it has come from your ISP and not from you at your address.

Warning: If the spammer has used a fake address, then your bounce message will itself be bounced back to the postmaster and you won't receive the bounced bounce email. So please don't use this feature to bounce back spam as most spam is sent from fake sender addresses, so the bounces go nowhere and may annoy your internet service provider.

Question: What does the bounced message look like?

Send yourself an email, then bounce it. The message will be bounced back to the sender and they will receive an email similar to a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an email to a wrong address.

Question: I can't bounce messages!

Make sure the SMTP settings are correct. Another reason you may not be able to bounce messages is you are bouncing messages for an account that is not the same as your dial up provider. To get around this problem, make the SMTP settings for your account is the same as your dial up provider.

Question: Why do I get the error message 'Error sending bounce messages for account "yourname" SMTP host SMTP.yourisp.prefix refused access'

This is because your dial up provider does not allow relaying (sending an email from one provider via another provider). To get around this problem, make the SMTP settings for all your accounts to be the same as your dial up provider.

Question: Will the spammers know I am bouncing emails?

No, the bounced messages look exactly like a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an email off to a wrong address. There is no way the spammers can tell it is not genuine.

Question: Why are my friends getting their emails bounced back to them?

You may have tested out the bouncing when you first started the program in which case their names will be in the blacklist. Go to the Tools menu, Option, and click on the Blacklist tab and locate your friends name and delete it.

Question: Why do I get my bounced message back?

This may be because of two things.

1. When MailWasher sends a bounce email, it sends it via the postmaster of your internet service provider so it looks exactly like it is a genuine bounced email. If the message that you are trying to bounce has a false return address then you will receive a non deliverable bounced email which will further clutter your inbox - this is because you own your own domain and all the mail is fed in to that domain. This doesn't happen if you have an address from a internet service provider - they get the non deliverable bounced email back to their inbox. To stop the non deliverable emails coming back in to your inbox, enter the address MAILER-DAEMON@mydomain.com in the blacklist and set it to auto delete. (where mydomain.com is actually the domain you own)

Some ISP's may modify all the emails sent so that they contain the real email address in both the 'from' field and 'reply-to' field. There is nothing much we can do about this as this as we can't control it, we would suggest you not use the bounce feature in this case.

Question: I own my own domain name, and spam gets bounced back to me?

When MailWasher sends a bounce email, it sends it via the postmaster of your Internet service provider so it looks exactly like it is a genuine bounced e-mail. If the message that you are trying to bounce has a false return address then you will receive a non deliverable bounced email which will further clutter your inbox - this is because you own your own domain and all the mail is fed in to that domain. This doesn't happen if you have an address from an Internet Service Provider - they get the non deliverable bounced email back to their inbox.

To stop the non deliverable emails coming back in to your inbox, enter the address MAILER-DAEMON@mydomain.com in the blacklist and set it to auto delete. (where mydomain.com is actually the domain you own)

Question: How does MailWasher delete messages?

MailWasher deletes email directly off your internet providers server before it is downloaded.

Question: Can I get deleted messages back?

MailWasher Pro keeps a log of deleted messages and lets you rescue these via the recycle bin

Question: How do I preview an email?

Double click on any email that is showing. A pop-up window will appear and download the contents for you to view in that window. You can stop viewing at any time by clicking the cross in the corner to exit.

Question: Why does MailWasher only preview in text format, and not HTML?

HTML can carry viruses and other scripts which can run when viewed. Although HTML is easier to read and better to look at, it is potentially harmful to view HTML emails if you are unsure of where they have come from.

Question: How does the blacklist work?

Any email address on the blacklist will either be automatically deleted and bounced or be able to be viewed prior to bouncing. Any emails you decide to bounce will automatically be added to the blacklist. You can easily delete any entries in the blacklist.

Question: How do I enter an address in to the Blacklist?

There are a few ways.

1. Press the 'Add' button in the 'Blacklist/friends list' tab and you can either enter a whole address or..
2. Use a wildcard to enter anyone, say for example, all emails from the same domain that you get sent junk from. eg. *@mailwasher.net would catch anyone from MailWasher.net, and ????@mailwasher.net would catch anyone with a four letter name who works at MailWasher.
3. You can bring up another column on the main screen which will be labeled 'Blacklist' - do this by going to Tools, Options, General tab and ticking the 'Blacklist' option in the Column Order box. This makes it easy to 'tick' your junk emailers as they send you emails.

Question: Can I import an existing blacklist?

Yes, if the existing blacklist is a plain text file of email addresses. The blacklist file is located in the application data directory, this can be located by selecting About in the Help menu and clicking on the link. Just copy and paste your new addresses in to the blacklist file in that directory.

N.B.MailWasher must be closed before any changes are made to this file

Question: Why don't big imported spam lists work with MailWasher?

If you use Windows 95,98, or Me these operating systems have a limit of 32,000 characters for a list and will stop MailWasher working properly if the list is too big.

Question: Why can I import the junk senders file from Outlook into MailWasher, but I can't with Outlook Express?

Outlook has it's Junk Senders List as a plain text file and can be easily added to MailWasher's blacklist file. Outlook Express has it's Junk Sender's List in the registry which cannot be exported as a text file.

Question: How do the 'auto-delete and auto-bounce' options work?

As soon as your mail is checked on the server, and identified as being from a sender in the blacklist, it is bounced directly from the server to the sender and deleted so you never actually see it.

Question: How does the 'mark blacklisted messages' work?

Blacklist emails will still show up on the main screen for you to preview and decide if you want to bounce them. So they won't be automatically bounced off the server before you view them.

Question: Why is every email marked 'Origin Blacklisted by ORDB' in the Status column?

Problem...

Origin of Spam External DNS Blacklist Server 'ORDB' is marking every mail as "Origin Blacklisted by ORDB"

Why...

ORDB which was discontinued some time ago is now replying again, however it's still not in service which means that every answer it gives is positive.

What this means...

Anyone using ORDB will have every email marked as "Origin Blacklisted....." by this service, unless the address is in the Friends List.

Solution...
If you have ORDB checked in MailWasher Spam Tools then uncheck.

In MailWasher click > Spam Tools > Origin of Spam and uncheck "ORDB (relays.ordb.org)" and click OK (or press 'Enter' key on your keyboard)

If you are on MailWasher Free then old MW Free doesn't allow DNS Blacklist Servers to be altered. Upgrading to 6.1 MW Free would solve this problem as it allows the DNS Blacklist Servers to be altered.

Question: How does the friends list work?

The friends list is where you enter all the addresses that you want to mark as being legitimate, this way they will not be confused as being labeled as spam or similar.

Question: How do I enter an address in to the friends list?

There are a few ways.

1. Press the 'Add' button in the 'Blacklist/friends list' tab and you can either enter a whole address or...
2. Use a wildcard to enter anyone, say for example, all emails from the same company as your friend. eg. *@mailwasher.net would let anyone from MailWasher.net be entered as your friend, and ????@mailwasher.net would let anyone with a four letter name who works at MailWasher be entered as your friend.
3. You can bring up another column on the main screen which will be labeled 'friends' - do this by going to Tools, Options, General tab and ticking the 'Friends list' option in the Column Order box. This makes it easy to 'tick' your friends as they send you emails.

Question: Can I transfer my address book in to the friends list?

If you can export your address book to a text (.txt) file then yes you can. The friends list is actually at the bottom of the blacklist (contained in the application data directory which can be located by selecting About in the Help menu and clicking on the link), so you can just copy and paste the addresses there.

N.B.MailWasher must be closed before any changes are made to this file.

Question: How does the shared Blacklist and Friends list file work?

If you wish to share the blacklist/friends list across a network or locate the file in another directory then you will need to know this.

The blacklist/friends list can be located in another directory, but you can't write to it (enter another name) as there are both user and technical complications if users try to change it at the same time. So any additions or subtractions to the list are made in the blacklist/friends list in your MailWasher application data directory.

So the list that is shared should contain shared friends names and blacklisted addresses, and any additions or subtractions to this list are made in your own blacklist/friends list in the MailWasher application data directory.

Question: What is the 'Display emails received from friends' tick box for?

One way to deal with a whole lot of email is to change the friends list in this way - in the friends list options tab (Tools, Options, Friends/blacklist tab - Friends Options button), untick 'Display emails received from friends' so people in your friends list won't be shown - this allows you to go through your list very quickly - and then hold down the shift key at the same time as selecting the emails to delete, right click and select mark message for deletion, then you can go through what is left and unmark those from friends. After a while you will have lots of people in the friends list (which won't be shown) and all the junk shows up which can be marked for deletion. You can then go back and tick the 'show emails from friends' box to see what your friends have sent you, or simply download them.

Question: What are the numbers beside the email addresses in the text file?

They are the date the address last matched an email (for expiry purposes), if the number is missing then the current date is assumed.

Question: How does a filter work?

You can set up your own filters to identify any emails that meet certain criteria. For example, you may want to identify all emails that have the words 'Dear Friend' in the body of the email, or all emails that have a Microsoft word attachment.

Question: Can you show me an example?

1. To identify all emails with 'Dear Friend' in the body of the email.
In the rules section you would make "The body" "contains" "Dear Friend", you could even attach a name to the rule and what action MailWasher is to take with the email.

2. To identify all emails with a Microsoft word attachment. (.doc)
In the rules section you would make "The body" "contains" ".doc" This would identify any email with a word document attached (or any part of text that had the words .doc).

Question: Do you have any filters I can download?

Yes! Thanks to the work of a whole lot of people, here's a link to a big list of filters. Just download it and add it into your filters list!

MailWasher Filters

Question: What does RegExpr mean?

Regular expression.

Regular expressions are tools that look like comic-book expletives (#!?#@!!#) but can be very powerful when used to filter emails. Regular expressions are used to recognize patterns within emails. Regular expressions evaluate the text of your email and return an answer of true or false. That is, either the expression correctly describes the text of you email, or it doesn't. This enables you to specify a filter to easily identify certain kinds of email text or patterns.

Writing regular expressions take a bit of getting used to, but here is a basic outline and some more common examples below you may like to use yourself.

Now lets put some of these in to examples we can use.

Q. How can I filter any emails that have a blank subject line?

A. You would use: The 'Subject field' does not contain RegExpr, and then place a full stop . in the next box.
* Remember, the full stop . means any character, so we are making a rule that subject line does not contain any character, meaning a blank subject line.

Q. How can I filter out words in certain parts of sentences?

A. ^buy matches 'buy' only if its at the beginning of a sentence
buy$ matches 'buy' only if its at the end of a line
^buy$ matches 'buy' if it's the only word in the line

Question: Can I import existing filters?

Probably not. MailWasher has it's filters in a text file in the application data directory (this can be located by selecting About in the Help menu and clicking on the link). But you will probably have to add your own filter in.

Question: Why would I use different colours for my filters?

These appear on the status column and are activated when an email is intercepted which has triggered your filter.

Question: How does the 'precedence' feature work?

People in the friends list would not normally be subject to filters. But if you have set up a filter to specifically catch a particular virus then you can set the filter to take precedence (or identify the virus) over anyone in your friends list.

Question: How can I block foreign character sets?

As an example: With Korean Spam you can filter for the character set. Have a look at the entire header and you will see 'charset=something' Just filter the entire header looking for that and it will work.

Question: How can I change the email notification sound?

Do this via the sounds icon in the Control Panel of Windows. Go to Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel and click on the Sounds icon. The sound you want to change is the 'New Mail Notification'.

Question: How am I notified visually if there is new mail?

An icon will appear in the system tray to notify you of new email.

Question: What keyboard commands can I use with MailWasher?

Arrow-down (Move down one msg)
Page Up (Move up one page)
Page Down (Move down one page)
ESC key (Exits preview)
Delete key (Marks for delete)
Letter "D" (Mark to delete (as well as the delete key)
Letter "B" (Mark to bounce)
+ (Add to friends list)
- (Add to blacklist)
Enter/Space (Preview)
F5 (Check mail)
c (Clear Mail Grid)

Question: Why are my emails are being deleted after previewing?

Some server programs may have a feature that automatically deletes mail once you have seen it. This is not really desirable and may override what your email client instructs the server to do.

Solutions:
- Turn off the POP server's autodelete feature.
- Use compliant POP server software.
- Don't preview your mail.

Question: Don't spammers use email authentication programs to see if your email address is valid?

These email authentication programs are a waste of time because most internet service providers will authenticate any email address, even if it doesn't exist to get around this problem.

Question: How do I move messages from MailWasher to my email program?

You don't need to. Messages displayed in MailWasher are still available on your server for download in to your email program.

Question: Does MailWasher contain any spyware?

None at all

Question: I have installed MailWasher but can't find it. Where is it?

Click on the Start menu, Programs, MailWasher to start MailWasher. MailWasher also minimizes to the system tray at the bottom right of your screen.

Question: How will I know about MailWasher updates?

If you upgrade to MailWasher Pro, you will automatically receive notification of updates. Otherwise, notification of the latest version will be available on the home page of the MailWasher site.

Question: Who are the people behind MailWasher?

Nick Bolton, a guy from New Zealand and his software company Firetrust - www.firetrust.com

Question: How can I get in touch with you?

Fill in our feedback form

Postal: P.O.Box 4620

Christchurch 8140

New Zealand

Question: I have other questions, not answered here.

As MailWasher Free is a free product, we do not offer email support for it, you would need to upgrade to MailWasher Pro to receive personal email support.

However we do offer plenty of online help via the following channels:
Frequently asked Questions: http://www.mailwasher.net/faq.php
Knowledgebase: http://firetrust.com/support
Forums: http://www.firetrust.com/forums

Help file: Found in MailWasher Menu>>Help>>Program Help

MailWasher Pro is available at http://www.firetrust.com

Question: I have a suggestion for a feature for MailWasher.

Thanks!, we'd love to hear it. Please send us feedback

Question: I get a 'list out of bounds' error. How do I fix this?

If you get a 'list out of bounds' error then you will need to do a clean uninstall and install of MailWasher Free.

Please do a clean uninstall and install of MailWasher Free
Note: all your email account and other settings will have to be re entered into MailWasher .

Summary

Un-install MW.

Delete the MailWasher appdata directory.

Delete MailWasher registry entries.

Restart computer

Download and install MailWasher

Detailed Instructions

1. Ensure you find the MailWasher appdata directory while MailWasher is still running and installed.

In MailWasher click on Help >> About >> About >> Click the link to where
MailWasher Free stores the data directory>>
C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\MailWasherFree
or in Vista
C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\MailWasherFree\

2. Shutdown MailWasher

To shutdown MailWasher from running on your computer in MailWasher click File > Exit
Or if MailWasher is minimized to the System Tray then right click on the MailWasher icon and left click on Exit.

Computer says 'MailWasher is already running'
then there is a hotkey to bring MW to the fore if it's hidden:
Shift - CTRL - M
Try that combo to get it back to the screen if you're trying to start it when it's 'already running' but hidden.
Note: the hotkey combo is configurable in MW.

or try

Click, Ctrl, Alt, Delete on your keyboard, when the Windows Task Manager opens click the "Processes" tab,
If "Mailwasher.exe" is in the list there, click on it and click, "End Process"

3. Uninstall MailWasher.

Click Windows Start >All Programs > MailWasher Free >Uninstall MailWasher Free
then delete the MailWasher appdata directory C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\MailWasherFree
or in Vista it will be something like C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\MailWasherFree\

4. Next delete the MailWasher registry entries

Click > Windows Start >All Programs >Accessories> Command Prompt > and then type in Regedit and press enter on the keyboard.
Then find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\FireTrust\MailWasher Free and
Right click on MailWasher Free and left click on Delete and answer Yes to delete

5. Restart your computer.

6. Download and install the latest MailWasher
Please click http://www.mailwasher.net/download-mailwasher-free and then click the 'Download Now' button
You will be re directed and then have to Click 'Download Now' again .
Wait while MailWasher downloads.
A window will appear. Answer 'Yes' to install MailWasher and follow the instructions.
Ensure old MailWasher is not running when you install new MailWasher.