Latest Stable Version: 1.32.9

3 April 2002 

Improvements: 
• Text preview of HTML emails improved. 
• Minor updates to the heuristics. 
• Speed of large blacklists improved. 

Fixes: 
• Many minor bugs fixed. 

Introducing MailWasher, the easiest way to check and manage your e-mails before you download them. 

MailWasher is a powerful email checker with effective spam elimination. Discover the safe way to stop unwanted viruses and e-mails before they get to your computer. 

No gimmicks here, it is so easy to set up and use that you'll be managing your email like a pro in seconds. It can even be used as an effective privacy tool. 

I think you will find this to be the easiest, most effective way to manage your incoming e-mails. You will be amazed at how quickly you will like using MailWasher. 

 Finding it hard to be removed from mailing lists? Getting harassed by someone on your email? Tired of getting junk email from unknown sources? Why not make them think you no longer exist by bouncing back their email so it looks like your address has been closed down. 

Are you tired of getting forwarded e-mails with large attachments that take ages to download? Are you scared of getting an email virus? Why not delete the email directly off the server so you don't have to download it.

  Features and benefits

Bounce back unwanted e-mails so it looks as if your email address is not valid. This will make the sender think your address is no longer active so your name can be removed from their list. This unique feature is great for privacy and it couldn’t be simpler! 
Delete unwanted e-mails before you download them. You’ll be able to see who the email is from, the subject, and the attachment. This will enable you to decide if you want to delete the email or keep it. A great way to stop viruses or large attachments. 

Status. MailWasher analyses each email as it arrives and warns you if it is suspected junk mail or a virus by heuristic checking and filtering. The standard status categories are - Normal, Virus, Possibly virus, Possibly spam, Probably spam, Chain letter, Blacklisted, Blacklisted by (ORDB, Spam Cop etc). 

Blacklist. Any e-mails you bounce back get their senders details put on the blacklist for easy removal if they come back. You can even set it to automatically bounce and delete blacklisted e-mails, or whole domains off the server. Plus, MailWasher can use external blacklists such as ORDB, Spam Cop, VISI or you can specify your own. 

Friends List. Add your friends email addresses to MailWasher and they will always be recognised. You can even hide your friends from the screen so the spam is easy to recognise. 

Preview. You can preview the message in your email to see what the sender has to say before downloading it. Just double click on the message. 

Filtering. Effective filtering to automatically spot spam, plus it uses a customisable list of blacklisted e-mail senders and/or regular expressions to filter out potential spammer addresses and messages. 

It’s free. That’s right, you can keep on using this program and it won’t expire. You are offered the chance to register MailWasher and pay a price you think it is worth. Think of this payment as a tip - so please contribute something. This payment will help with the continued development of MailWasher and allow me to make a living. This payment can be as low as $3 or as high as you wish. If you find MailWasher useful and continue to use it, please register. As an incentive, our own advert on the software will be removed, you will receive a guide on getting the most out of MailWasher and combating spam, free upgrades for life, and a contribution of at least $20 will allow you to access our support desk. 

Unlimited email accounts. You can have as many email accounts as you want to check. It does not support web based accounts such as Hotmail and AOL at this time, but support for these is coming. 

Email overlay. New messages will come in and will reside in the screen until processed. 

Fast download of message headers, we have clocked speeds of 25 email message headers per second. 

Simplicity. No flashy gimmicks, so easy to use that you won’t feel like you have to learn a whole new program. In fact it has the familiar look and feel of Outlook Express. It's as easy as 1,2,3. Just check mail, mark for deletion/bounce, then process mail. Plus, MailWasher is only one file, and it won't distribute loads of other files all over your hard drive. 

Tell others. This feature allows you to tell others about MailWasher. It sends a short message to friends you nominate to tell them about MailWasher, its features and where they can download it. 

Other features: Check mail at different intervals. Don’t check mail at certain times. Play a sound when an email arrives, or be notified visually. Email log. Comprehensive help documentation on this site. 

This program is so simple to use, just leave it going and process your mail when you want to. 
 
FAQ

  Overview

Q.        How does MailWasher work? 
A.        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 MailWatcher) you can decide what to do with each individual email - download, delete, or bounce back.

If you check your accounts 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.


Q.        How do I start using MailWasher? 
A.        To begin using MailWasher, here's all you need to do.

To check email, don't open your email client first. Instead, just start MailWasher by double clicking on the desktop icon, or going to Start menu, Programs, then MailWasher.

The MailWasher program will then start and will tell you what messages you have waiting for you on the email server. In the check boxes, select whether to Delete or Bounce the messages (if nothing is checked, the emails will simply be downloaded to your email client as normal), and then select process mail. Processing mail will delete or bounce the emails you have selected. Your email client will open and you can download the remaining emails as you normally do. 

Q.        What is spam? 
A.        Spam is another word for unsolicited junk email. 

  Setup

Q.        Which operating systems does MailWasher run on? 
A.        Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP and XP Pro.

Q.        What are the minimum requirements to run MailWasher? 
A.        4 Mb of RAM, 4Mb of disk space, and a modem.

Q.        Which email programs does MailWasher work with? 
A.        MailWasher works independently of other email programs so it doesn’t matter which one you use. 

Q.        Which mail protocols does MailWasher support? 
A.        At this stage only POP3 is supported. I may introduce support for MAPI and certain web based accounts such as Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL if there is enough demand.

Q.        How can I download MailWasher? 
A.        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 1.5 Megabytes in size and takes approximately 4 minutes with a 56k modem to download or about 5 seconds with a DSL connection.

Q.        How do I install MailWasher?

A.        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 existing email accounts or add new ones. Once this is done, MailWasher will check those accounts for email.

Q.        Does MailWasher run in the background? 
A.        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.

Q.        Which email client will MailWasher start up? 
A.        MailWasher will use your default email client.

Q.        Why do I get an error when trying to start my email client? Or, how do I specify a default email client? 
A.        You may not have specified a default email client, to change this you will need to fiddle with the registry, but its not too difficult. 

Go to the Windows start menu, click on 'run', type 'regedit' in the box Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, follow the path to Software\Clients\Mail and change the Default Key to 'Outlook Express', 'Netscape Messenger' or another email application.

Q.        How do I switch off automatic checking in my email program? 
A.        The following are instructions for the more common email programs.

Netscape
Select Edit, then Preferences from the Netscape main menu. 
 
Open the Mail & Newsgroups section and go to Mail Servers. 
 
Select the desired e-mail account from the Incoming Mail Servers list, and click on the Edit button. 
 
Deselect the option labeled Check for mail every ( ) minutes. 
 
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). 
 
  
 
Eudora
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu. 
 
Select Checking Mail from the icon list on the left. 
 
Enter 0 in the input box labeled Check for mail every ( ) minute(s). 
 
  
 
Pegasus
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu. 
 
Click on the Network tab, then on the button labeled Advanced network configuration options. 
 
Enter 0 in the input box labeled Check for new POP3 mail every ( ) secs. 
 

Q.        I'm having problems with MailWasher connecting to the internet, what can I do? 
A.        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. The latest versions of Nortons antivirus add in a 'nortons reference' to 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 info. You won't need the nortons reference anyway as it doesn't make any difference as mailwasher only checks messages on the server in text mode - viruses and scripts can't run then. Nortons will catch anything when you download the email anyway.

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. 

  Accounts

Q.        Can I import my existing accounts in to MailWasher? 
A.        Yes, click on the Tools menu, then the accounts menu. There you will see a button to import your existing accounts.

Q.        What are my POP and SMTP settings? 
A.        POP is your incoming mail setting and SMTP is your outgoing mail setting. You will need to consult your documentation your internet provider supplied you with when you signed up.

Q.        What SMTP settings should I use when I have accounts from different providers or multiple accounts? 
A.        You should use the SMTP setting from your dial up provider for all your accounts. This will get around the problem of relaying emails which some providers do not allow, so all your emails will be bounced back via your dial up provider. You may get an error message that the email was not able to be bounced otherwise.

Q.        Why does MailWasher not import the password from my account? 
A.        Your email password is encrypted and has to be entered again by you.

Q.        How many accounts may I have? 
A.        You can have as many accounts as you wish.

Q.        How do I stop automatically checking an account? 
A.        In the tools menu-accounts-properties box, remove the tick from ‘Include this account in default mail check’.

Q.        Can I use Compuserve with MailWasher? 
A.        Yes, you will need to log into Compuserve using Compuserve software and create a "mail only password". 

Q.        Can I use Yahoo with MailWasher? 
A.        Yes, to set up a POP account with Yahoo go to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/pop/ 

Q.        What is APOP? 
A.        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. 

  Main Window

Q.        What does the status column mean? 
A.        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.

Q.        How can I change the order of the columns? 
A.        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.

Q.        How can I classify my incoming emails by sorting them?

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

Q.        What does the ‘tell a friend email’ look like? 
A.        Your friends will receive an email like below.

Hi your friends name

I just wanted to let you know that I'm using MailWasher, a program
designed to keep out unsolicited commercial email (otherwise known as
spam) and email viruses from your computer, so I've just got it to write
you a quick email message.

It also allows you to preview and delete emails before you download them,
like emails with large attachments or viruses. So you never have to
download bad emails again.

Plus a really handy feature allows you to bounce emails back to people so
it looks like your address doesn't exist. So if you're getting a lot of
unsolicited email or you gave your email address to the wrong person you
can now bounce it back to them so they can take your name off their list.

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

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

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

Your friend,

Your name

  Bouncing messages

Q.        How does MailWasher bounce messages? 
A.        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. 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. 

Q.        What does the bounced message look like? 
A.        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.

Q.        I can’t bounce messages! 
A.        Make sure the SMTP settings are correct. Another reason you may not abe 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 all your accounts to be the same as your dial up provider.

Q.        Why do I get the error message “Error sending bounce messages for account ‘yourname’, SMTP host SMTP.yourisp.prefix refused access”

A.        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.

Q.        Will the spammers know I am bouncing emails? 
A.        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.

Q.        Why are my friends getting their emails bounced back to them? 
A.        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.

Q.        Why do I get my bounced message back? 
A.        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.

Q.        I own my own domain name, and spam gets bounced back to me? 
A.        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) 

  Deleting messages

Q.        How does MailWasher delete messages? 
A.        MailWasher deletes email directly off your internet providers server before it is downloaded.

Q.        Can I get deleted messages back? 
A.        Unfortunately not, you may be able to contact your internet service provider and see if they back up their messages. Otherwise you will have to write back to the sender if you can remember them and ask for their message again.

  Preview

Q.        How do I preview an email? 
A.        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.

Q.        Why does MailWasher only preview in text format, and not HTML? 
A.        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. 

  Registering

Q.        Why should I register? 
A.        Because you should. No, seriously, the advert on the front screen will disappear, you will receive notification of upgrades and fixes, and unlimited free upgrades (I may release it as shareware in the future, but those who register now will still receive all the benefits in the future). Plus you get a copy of my guide to stopping spam and getting the most out of MailWasher. If you spend US$20 you also get unlimited support. And, of course the bit I like the most, you get to contribute a token amount to me so I may continue to develop MailWasher and offer ongoing help.

Q.        How much can I contribute? 
A.        Payment is voluntary, and I’m working for donations at this stage. Anything from US$3 upwards will be accepted to register. If you spend US$20 you will get unlimited support. As a guide line see the chart below.

            Educational/Non profit                                       $5-10

            Personal                                                           $10-20

            Business                                                           $20-30

            More than 5 users                                             $10 per site

Q.        How do I register? 
A.        Click on the register button on the menu bar. A window will open asking you how much you want to contribute. Select the amount and press pay. You will be taken to a secure payment site and be asked for your credit card details. Enter these and you will be immediately sent a registration key to enter in to MailWasher. 

Q.        How can I pay? 
A.        There are several options: 

Pressing "register" on the Mailwasher tool bar will bring up Credit Card options - Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and others. 
PayPal can be accepted with an email to payments@mailwasher.net 
A personal check in your own currency is far more preferable to a money order or bank draft, as it costs you nothing and it only costs me 5 cents to bank. Checks should be made out to 'Nick Bolton' and sent to P.O.Box 4620, Christchurch 8015, New Zealand. I will register you manually when I receive it. 
Cash if you like, sent to P.O.Box 4620, Christchurch 8015, New Zealand. I will register you manually when I receive it. 
International Money order or Western Union Money Order made out to 'Nick Bolton', although these are expensive for you. Not domestic Money Orders as I can't do anything with these and they just turn out to be expensive bookmarks. 

Q.        I don’t have a credit card, but still want to register. 
A.        You can send a cheque made payable to ‘Nick Bolton’ and send it to P.O.Box 4620, Christchurch 8015, New Zealand. Include your email address and I will do a manual registration and send you a registration key.

Q.        How can I pay if my browser won't load? 
A.        Use this url: https://select.worldpay.com/wcc/purchase?instId=27171&cartId=MailWasherReg&amount=20&currency=USD and change the amount=20 to the payment you want to make.

Q.        Which company handles the credit card verifications and payments? 
A.        WorldPay, a company based in the United Kingdom handles the payments. You can visit their website at www.worldpay.com

Q.        How does the registration key work? 
A.        The key is encrypted and can only be used once.

Q.        Where do I enter my registration key? 
A.        Copy your key and paste it in to the box contained within the registration window and press register.

Q.        I have formatted my hard drive and want to reinstall MailWasher. How do I get back my registered version without the advert? 
A.        Click on register, and then the button marked ‘I have already paid’. Enter the email address you used when you first registered and a new key will immediately be sent to your email address.

  General tab

Q.        How can I change the new mail notification sound? 
A.        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’.

Q.        What is a DNS spam Blacklist server? 
A.        This is a site that hosts a list of known hosts that let, or have been known to send spam in the past. 

Q.        What benefit is it to me? 
A.        When checking your mail in MailWasher, any new emails will be checked against these lists to see if the email comes from a known source of spam. This will be listed in the 'status' column on the main screen. These emails will automatically be marked for bounce and delete. 

Q.        Which lists are provided and are there more? 
A.        ORDB, VISI and SpamCop are built in, but you can add more if you want.

Other free blacklists are:
blacklist.spambag.org
outputs.orbz.org
inputs.orbz.org
ztl.dorkslayers.com
blackholes.intersil.net
blackholes.wirehub.net

The listed ones in MailWasher are:
relays.visi.com
relays.ordb.org
bl.spamcop.net


Q.        What about MAPS RBL? Isn't that the most well regarded blacklist database? 
A.        Yes it is the most well regarded database, but while it used to be free it is no longer so. You can still sign up for one hobbyist licence for free, but it is restricted to one IP address only. 

Q.        What is heuristic checking? 
A.        MailWasher is able to examine each email it views for suspicious signs that it may be spam or a virus and to warn you. MailWasher lets you have different strengths of checking to help identify suspicious emails.

  Blacklist

Q.        How does the blacklist work? 
A.        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.

Q.        How do I enter an address in to the Blacklist? 
A.        There are a few ways. 

Press the 'Add' button in the 'Blacklist/friends list' tab and you can either enter a whole address or… 
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. 
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. 

Q.        Can I import an existing blacklist? 
A.        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.

Q.        Why don't big imported spam lists work with MailWasher? 
A.        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. A good (large) list can be found at http://www.gaznet.au.com/spam/download.htm 

Q.        Why can I import the junk senders file from Outlook into MailWasher, but I can’t with Outlook Express? 
A.        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.

Q.        How do the ‘auto-delete and auto-bounce’ options work? 
A.        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.

Q.        How does the ‘mark blacklisted messages’ work? 
A.        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.

  Friends list

Q.        How does the friends list work? 
A.        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.

Q.        How do I enter an address in to the friends list? 
A.        There are a few ways. 

Press the 'Add' button in the 'Blacklist/friends list' tab and you can either enter a whole address or… 
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. 
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. 

Q.        Can I transfer my address book in to the friends list? 
A.        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. 

Q.        How does the shared Blacklist and Friends list file work? 
A.        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. 

Q.        What is the 'Display emails received from friends' tick box for? 
A.        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. 

Q.        What are the numbers beside the email addresses in the text file? 
A.        They are the date the address last matched an email (for expiry purposes), if the number is missing then the current date is assumed. 

  Filters

Q.        How does a filter work? 
A.        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. 

Q.        Can you show me an example? 
A.        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). 

Q.        What does RegExpr mean? 
A.        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. 

Q.        How can I make a regular expression filter? 
A.        They 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. 

Character typed What it represents Example 
Any character Represents the character typed, with the exception of the special characters defined below a represents a, b represents b, etc 
. Any character (except line breaks) Will match c,3, space, etc 
\d Any digit Will match 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, or 9 
\D Any non digit Will match anything except 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9 
^ Beginning of line   
$ End of line   
\t Tab \thello matches 'hello' preceded by a tab 
\r Line break (return)   
\s Whitespace Matches any whitespace character (space,tab,line break,newline) 
\S Non whitespace Matches any non white space character 
\w Word characters Typically letters, numbers and underscores 
\W Non word characters Matches any non word character 
\character Represents a character that is normally a special character The special characters are .#^$\?+*|[]() 
[any series of character] Represents any of the characters inside the brackets. [abc] represents a,b, or c 
[any character-another character] Represents any characters within the range of characters specified [a-c] represents a,b, or c 
[^any series of characters] Represents any character except the ones specified after the ^ [^c3] represents any character except c or 3 
? Represents 0 or 1 of the previous character ba?t matches bat or bt, but not boat 
* Represents 0 or more of the previous character ba*t matches bt, bat, baat, etc. 
+ Represents 1 or more of the previous character ba+t matches bat, baat, etc. but not bt 
pattern1|pattern2 Represents either of the patterns specified (or) ba|t matches ba or t but not bat (it will match ba and then t for two matches instead of one) 
(pattern)one of the special characters Same as above, but treats the characters within the parenthesis as a group (ba)*t will match t, bat, babat, but not bt 

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

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


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. 



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

More details of regular expressions can be found here. There are also other guides available on the web. 

Q.        Can I import existing filters? 
A.        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.

Q.        Why would I use different colours for my filters? 
A.        These appear on the status column and are activated when an email is intercepted which has triggered your filter.

Q.        How does the 'precedence' feature work? 
A.        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. 

  Miscellaneous

Q.        Why is MailWasher free? 
A.        Realising that people would rather download something that is free and not crippled from working, I would hope to have a fairly good user base in a short time. I would like to see MailWasher become a very POPular program to use and to reach enough users so that a reasonable amount of people would want to register MailWasher.

MailWasher works on a donation system, if you find it useful and it works for you then I would be very grateful for a donation.

Q.        It seems to me that spam increases over holiday periods. 
A.        That is correct, over Christmas 01/02 spam was said to increase 650%. 

Q.        Why can’t I use Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or other web based accounts etc with MailWasher? 
A.        MailWasher only supports POP3 at this stage. Some web based email providers do offer POP3 access. Web based email checking is on the list for future development.

Q.        How can I change the email notification sound? 
A.        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’.

Q.        How am I notified visually if there is new mail?

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

What keyboard commands can I use with MailWasher?

A.        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 


Q.        Why are my emails are being deleted after previewing? 
A.        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.


Q.        Where are the registry settings for MailWasher? 
A.        HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\eCOSM\MailWasher

Q.        Don’t spammers use email authentication programs to see if your email address is valid? 
A.        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.

Q.        How do I move messages from MailWasher to my email program? 
A.        You don’t need to. Messages displayed in MailWasher are still available on your server for download in to your email program.

Q.        Does MailWasher contain any spyware? 
A.        No, but whenever a registered version earlier than 1.30.7 checks with our server to confirm that the registration key is valid, it will inform the server of which version of MailWasher you are running.

Versions 1.30.7 and later no longer connect to our server. 

Q.        I have installed MailWasher but can’t find it. Where is it? 
A.        Click on the Start menu, Programs, MailWasher to start MailWasher. MailWasher also minimizes to the system tray at the bottom right of your screen.

Q.        How will I know about MailWasher updates? 
A.        If you register, you will automatically receive notification of updates. Otherwise, notification of the latest version will be available on the home page of the MailWasher site.

Q.        Who are the people behind MailWasher? 
A.        Nick Bolton, a 29 year old guy from New Zealand and software developers eCOSM - www.ecosm.com

Q.        How can I get in touch with you? 
A.        email: feedback@mailwasher.net

            Postal:  P.O.Box 4620

                        Christchurch 8015

                        New Zealand

            Phone: +64 21 622 070 (not while I am sleeping)

Q.        I have other questions, not answered here. 
A.        Send them to feedback@mailwasher.net

Q.        Can I have a copy of the source code? 
A.        Nope. It’s commercial property.

Q.        I have a suggestion for a feature for MailWasher. 
A.        Tell me at suggest@mailwasher.net

