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[OM] [OT] Good software for List members

Subject: [OM] [OT] Good software for List members
From: Garth Wood <garth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 22:26:02 -0600
Okay, if you're like me, you probably hate spam.

I mean *hate* the damn stuff.  I'm now up to over 200 (!) spams a day, and 
there's no end in sight.  I've tried a whole swack of different spam fighter 
software, without finding anything really good.  The latest I tried was Spam 
Blocker 2.0 from CoffeeCup Software -- not bad, but when you're getting the 
kind of spam volumes I'm getting, not great, either, and definitely NOT for 
people with slow modem connections (it downloads everything and then goes 
through all the messages).

Then I stumbled upon this one:


   http://www.firetrust.com/products/mailwasherpro/


It's called "MailWasher Pro 3.0," it's made by a New Zealand company called 
"Firetrust" (they also sell mail firewall solutions), and damn me if it isn't 
exactly what I've been looking for.  You can download a free 30-day trial of 
the software, fully functional.  I've had it for about a day now, and I'm 
*sold* -- I'll be buying me a copy tomorrow morning, soon as I get my first cup 
of java in me.

It checks your mail on your mail server, downloads *only* the headers and a few 
lines of info, and optionally checks the source addresses/domains against 
several different spam databases on the 'Net (such as SpamCop).  It also uses a 
series of heuristics to check for the likelihood of a message being spam, and 
you can adjust the strength of the heuristic filtering.

Then it flags everything it thinks is spam, and asks you to confirm.  It's 
mostly correct, and far faster than I am.  Tweak the remaining few messages it 
was unsure about, and then ask it to get rid of everything else.  It then 
contacts your mail server again, deletes the spam from the server without ever 
downloading the entire message (some spam contains embedded images etc., eating 
valuable bandwidth -- especially if you're on a modem connection!), and as an 
added bonus, sends a "bounce" message back to the origin which looks exactly 
like the standard "This recipient does not exist" message from your ISP's SMTP 
mailserver.  Even though many spammers are "one-offers" from a mail address 
that'll never be used again, it'll get back to enough of them that eventually 
your e-mail address shouldn't show up so often on those bulk mailing lists that 
are always being schlepped around the 'Net.  Schweet!

Finally, it adds every address that sent you spam to an internal list of known 
spammers, which it uses as an additional filter.  You can also set up custom 
filters, but I haven't needed any yet (nobody's ticked me off enough to be sent 
to /dev/null/ in the last little while...).

No connection to this company whatsoever.  Just HUGELY impressed.  It's also a 
very fast app.  And if you get lots of spam and you're on the business end of a 
slow modem, it's probably worth its weight in platinum.


Garth


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