All MailWasher Pro users are entitled to unlimited email technical support from the best in the business. Support queries are handled by the very people who created the software, and when you email your problem to Firetrust's tech-support team you can be sure that it will be handled by a person — not an automated reply script.
We do, however, suggest that you first peruse Firetrust's comprehensive FAQ for MailWasher Pro. You'll find answers to the most commonly asked questions so that you can solve your problem straight away.
What is spam anyway? "Spam" is generally defined as unsolicited email sent to many people, and usually of a commercial nature. Spammers send mail to large numbers of email addresses which have either been purchased from another company or spammer, or "harvested" from websites and bulletin boards. Personal email (where one individual knows the other) is not spam, nor is a reply to an email. If you sign up for a newsletter on a website, that newsletter is not spam, but if that website then sends you masses of promotional material that you did not ask for, this could be called spam. The key characteristics of spam are "bulk" and "unsolicited", and a message usually needs both of these before it can be classed as spam.
How does MailWasher Pro work? MailWasher Pro essentially allows you to act upon your email while it is still residing on your email server.
When an email is sent to you, it arrives at your email server and waits for you to open your email client and download it. You don't usually get to choose whether you want to get the message.
MailWasher Pro allows you to access the messages waiting on the server, where you can bounce or delete messages without having to download them. Once you've "washed" the waiting mail with MailWasher Pro, you can download the remaining messages using your email client. The benefit of this is that you won't have to download a wad of spam with your legitimate mail, and you can help protect your computer from damaging attachments, simply by not downloading them. MailWasher Pro also uses filters and blacklists to help determine which messages might be spam or viruses.
How do I use MailWasher Pro? When you want to check your email, start MailWasher Pro by double-clicking on the desktop icon, or go to Start menu, Programs, then MailWasher Pro.
MailWasher Pro will then start, and will show you all the emails you have waiting for you on your email server. You'll be able to see the subject lines and sender, as well as the file size and whether there are any attachments (you can choose what information you want displayed in the options panel).
MailWasher Pro will make recommendations based on its analysis of the initial email information, and will tell you which messages it thinks might be spam or viruses. Based on this information (and your own common sense), you can select to bounce, blacklist or delete messages by ticking the appropriate box next to the message. If you want to keep and download a message, you should leave these boxes empty.
Once you've decided what to do with your messages, select "Process Mail". All deleted, bounced or blacklisted messages will be deleted, bounced or blacklisted, and your email client will open to retrieve all your other messages, as normal.
How can I download MailWasher Pro? 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 Pro 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
How do I install MailWasher Pro? Double click on the downloaded file to begin the installation. It is a very easy installation and when it's finished it will ask if you want to start the program file. If you click Ok, MailWasher Pro will start and ask if you want to import existing email accounts or add new ones. Once this is done, MailWasher Pro will check those accounts for email.
Does MailWasher Pro run in the background? If you have a permanent connection to the internet, you can leave MailWasher Pro running in the background and set it to automatically check mail at a pre-determined interval via the Tools, Options menu.
If you have Internet Explorer you can right click on the Internet Explorer short-cut on their desktop >> go to Properties >> click Programs at the top >> and select your default email client here.
Alternatively, go to the Windows Start menu, click on 'run' and 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 e-mail application.
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 2001 and previous versions of Norton's antivirus add in a 'Norton's 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 Norton's reference anyway as MailWasher Pro only checks messages on the server in text mode so that viruses and scripts can't run. Norton will catch any remaining scripts or viruses when you download the e-mail.
3. Make sure you can receive POP3 e-mail. POP3 is by far the most common internet connection protocol in use, but there are others available which you might be using. MailWasher Pro only supports POP3 at present.
Please note: Hotmail and MSN Hotmail accounts cannot be imported and must be added manually.
What are my POP and SMTP settings? POP is your incoming mail setting and SMTP is your outgoing mail setting. You will need to refer to the documentation your internet provider supplied you with when you signed up.
N.B Hotmail and MSN Hotmail do not use POP and SMTP servers.
What SMTP settings should I use when I have accounts from different providers or multiple accounts? You should use the SMTP setting from your dial up provider for all your accounts. This will get around the problem of relaying e-mail which some providers do not allow, so all your e-mail will be bounced back via your dial up provider. You may get an error message that the e-mail was not able to be bounced otherwise.
How do I stop automatically checking an account? Go to the Tools menu, Accounts, Properties. Select the account you don't wish to have checked, then uncheck the "Include this account in default mail check" box.
CompuServe Classic does support POP3 mail. To active your POP3 Mailbox on your Classic account, GO POPMAIL online. CompuServe 2000 accounts cannot be used with MailWasher.
Can I use Yahoo with MailWasher Pro? Yes, though Yahoo.com users need to sign up for POP3 access, which requires an annual fee. Other Yahoo domains (Yahoo.co.uk, Yahoo.com.au) still provide free POP3 access. Go to www.yahoo.com
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.
What does the status column mean? This column shows the result of MailWasher Pro's analysis of the message. It will either say possibly spam, probably spam, possibly virus, probably virus or blacklisted. Messages without anything in this column have been deemed to be "normal" (not spam). This column will also show when messages are filtered by your own custom filters.
How can I change the order of the columns? In the Tools menu, click on Options. In the General tab, the Column Order box will let you select or deselect and change the column order of the columns.
How does MailWasher Pro bounce messages? MailWasher Pro uses an algorithm to determine the best route to send the bounced message back to the sender (either the From, Reply To, or Return Path addresses). MailWasher Pro can bounce a message in one of two ways. Local option - The bounce is sent back via your ISP's postmaster. Remote option - The bounce is sent back via the sender's SMTP server. In either case, the bounce looks exactly like it has come from your ISP and not from you. If the spammer has used a fake address, then your bounced message will itself be bounced back to the postmaster (if you use the local option) or lost in cyber space (remote option). You shouldn't receive the bounced bounce message again.
What does the bounced message look like? Try it yourself! Send yourself an email, then bounce it with MailWasher. The message will be bounced back to the sender (you) and you will receive an email similar to the "mailer-daemon" message you would receive if you sent an email to a wrong address. You can compare the fake bounce message with a genuine bounce message by sending an email to a non-existent address with the same domain name as yours (for example, if your address is bob@yourisp.com, try sending one to bobeatscake56376@yourisp.com, or something equally nonsensical). You should receive a mailer-daemon response almost immediately, and it should look almost exactly the same as the MailWasher Pro bounce.
I can’t bounce messages! Make sure the SMTP settings are correct. Another reason you may not able 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.
Why are my friends getting their e-mail 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.
When MailWasher Pro sends a bounce e-mail, 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 e-mail 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 e-mail back to their inbox. To stop the non deliverable e-mail 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). An easier solution is to change the way MailWasher Pro bounces mail - in the advanced BOuncing options under Accounts - change it to 'Use Remote SMTP servers only'.
Some ISP's may modify all the e-mail sent so that they contain the real e-mail 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.
I own my own domain name, and spam gets bounced back to me. When MailWasher Pro sends a bounce e-mail, 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 e-mail 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 e-mail back to their inbox.
To stop the non deliverable e-mail 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)
Can I get deleted messages back? 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.
Double click on any e-mail 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.
Why does MailWasher Pro only preview in txt 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 e-mail if you are unsure of where they have come from.
The session was intentionally closed by the server before the session was completed. 1. MailWasher was written to comply with POP3 standards and if for some reason the server you are dialing in to has an error or is not fully compliant (it's more common than you think) then MailWasher will do nothing and the server will then disconnect. It could also just be a temporary communication problem causing the server to disconnect from MailWasher.
2. You should be using your POP3 settings given by your provider to dial in to the server, not a proxy such as 127.0.0.1, pop.nortons.antivirus or localhost.
Plain text password not supported. 1. A ‘plain text’ password is the most common type of password. Some e-mail providers like MSN require further identification. If you have a POP3 MSN account click Tools >> Accounts >> Properties >> select Incoming Mail at the top >> Advanced POP3 Configuration >> select “Use Secure Authentication” and “MSN SPA”
2. If your mail server require APOP click Tools >> Accounts >> Properties >> select Incoming Mail at the top >> Advanced POP3 Configuration >> select “Use Secure Authentication” and “APOP”
3. You should be using your POP3 settings given by your provider to dial in to the server, not a proxy such as 127.0.0.1, pop.nortons.antivirus or localhost.
Access Violation at address 0049DCAA in Module ‘MailWasher.exe’. Read of Address FFFFFFFC. If you receive this error when you attempt to open MailWasher, then likely it is your filters.txt file causing this problem. Click on Start >> Search >> Files or Folders >> search your PC for filters.txt >> open this file and delete any blank lines or spaces at the end of this file, by placing your cursor immediately after the last visible character in the file and press Delete until you are sure no extra characters exist >> Save and Close the file.
Failed to resolve remote MX servers. MailWasher requires a connection to the remote MX servers when either bouncing from Hotmail or bouncing using the Remote method. Some ISPs however do not utilise or allow connections to these servers, in which case the bounce will not be successful. For any POP3 account change your bounce method to Local. Click on Tools >> Accounts >> Properties >> select the Bouncing & Outgoing Mail tab at the top >> click Advanced Bouncing Options >> select the Bouncing Details tab at the top >> select Use Local SMTP Server. For any Hotmail account, unfortunately you are not able to bounce.
Why should I register? If you register MailWasher Pro you will be able to use it forever past the 30 day trial period, you will also be eligible for free updates to the software, technical support and new features for one year.
How do I register? Click on the register button on the menu bar. 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 Pro.
Where do I enter my registration key? If you go to the e-mail that contains the registration key, highlight the registration text and once it is all selected, right click over the selected text and a small menu will appear, select Copy. Then go to MailWasher Pro, click on Register then the ‘Paste from Clipboard’ button, then press the Register button to complete the process.
How can I change the new mail 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’.
What is a DNS spam Blacklist server? A DNS Spam Blacklist Server is a database of known internet addresses (or IP's) used by persons or companies who are either sending spam, or who are known in some way to support spammers (having open mail relays, hosting Web sites, distributing marketing spamming software, etc).
What benefit is it to me? When checking your mail in MailWasher Pro, any new e-mail will be checked against these lists to see if the e-mail comes from a known source of spam. This will be listed in the 'status' column on the main screen. These e-mail will automatically be marked for bounce and delete.
What is heuristic checking? MailWasher Pro is able to examine each e-mail it views for suspicious signs that it may be spam or a virus and to warn you. MailWasher Pro lets you have different strengths of checking to help identify suspicious e-mail.
How does the blacklist work? Any e-mail address on the blacklist will either be automatically deleted and bounced or be able to be viewed prior to bouncing. Any e-mail you decide to bounce will automatically be added to the blacklist. You can easily delete any entries in the blacklist.
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 e-mail from the same domain that you get sent junk from. eg. *@firetrust.com would catch anyone from firetrust.com, and ????@firetrust.com would catch anyone with a four letter name who works at Firetrust. 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 e-mailers as they send you e-mail.
Can I import an existing blacklist? Yes, if the existing blacklist is a plain text file of e-mail addresses. The blacklist file (blacklist.txt) is located in the application data directory, this can be located by selecting About in the Help menu and clicking on the link. Copy and paste your new addresses into the blacklist file in that directory. Note: If changes are to be made to this file, MailWasher Pro must be closed before opening this file, and remain closed until you have entered and saved your changes. The format of the file must be specific to one e-mail address per line, with no extra characters like commas etc.. the blacklist is contained under the heading "[Blacklisted emails]", the friends list is also contained in this file under the heading "[Whitelisted emails].
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 your personal blacklist, it is bounced directly from the server to the sender and deleted so you never actually see it. Messages marked by the DNS Spam Database servers will not be automatically deleted or bounced.
How does the ‘mark blacklisted messages’ work? Blacklist e-mail 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.
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.
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 e-mail from the same company as your friend. eg. *@firetrust.com would let anyone from Firetrust.com be entered as your friend, and ????@firetrust.com would let anyone with a four letter name who works at Firetrust 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 e-mail.
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.
If changes are to be made to this file, MailWasher Pro must be closed before opening this file, and remain closed until you have entered and saved your changes. The format of the file must be specific to one e-mail address per line, with no extra characters like commas etc.. the friends list is contained in this file under the heading "[Whitelisted emails].
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 Pro 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 Pro application data directory.
What is the 'Display e-mail received from friends' tick box for? One way to deal with a whole lot of e-mail 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 e-mail 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 e-mail 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 e-mail from friends' box to see what your friends have sent you, or simply download them.
How does a filter work? You can set up your own filters to identify any e-mail that meet certain criteria. For example, you may want to identify all e-mail that have the words 'Dear Friend' in the body of the e-mail, or all e-mail that have a microsoft word attachment.
Can you show me an example? 1. To identify all e-mail with 'Dear Friend' in the body of the e-mail. 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 Pro is to take with the email.
2. To identify all e-mail with a Microsoft word attachment. (.doc) In the rules section you would make "The body" "contains" ".doc" This would identify any e-mail with a word document attached (or any part of text that had the words .doc).
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!
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 e-mail and return an answer of true or false. That is, either the expression correctly describes the text of you e-mail, or it doesn't. This enables you to specify a filter to easily identify certain kinds of e-mail text or patterns.
How can I make a regular expression filter? 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 .#^$\?+*|[]()
[any series of character]
Represents any of the characters inside the brackets.
[abc] represents a,b, or c
[any character-another character]
Represents any characters within the range of characters specified
[a-c] represents a,b, or c
[^any series of characters]
Represents any character except the ones specified after the ^
[^c3] represents any character except c or 3
?
Represents 0 or 1 of the previous character
ba?t matches bat or bt, but not boat
*
Represents 0 or more of the previous character
ba*t matches bt, bat, baat, etc.
+
Represents 1 or more of the previous character
ba+t matches bat, baat, etc. but not bt
pattern1|pattern2
Represents either of the patterns specified (or)
ba|t matches ba or t but not bat (it will match ba and then t for two matches instead of one)
(pattern)one of the special characters
Same as above, but treats the characters within the parenthesis as a group
(ba)*t will match t, bat, babat, but not bt
Now lets put some of these in to examples we can use.
buy$ 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.
Can I import existing filters? Probably not. MailWasher Pro 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.
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.
Why can’t I use Yahoo or AOL with MailWasher Pro? MailWasher Pro only supports POP3 and Hotmail protocols at this stage. Some web based e-mail providers do offer POP3 access - Yahoo.com for example offer it for $24.95 a year. AOL support is due for inclusion in the future.
How can I change the e-mail 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’.
Why is my e-mail 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 e-mail 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.
How do I move messages from MailWasher Pro to my e-mail program? You don’t need to. Messages displayed in MailWasher Pro are still available on your server for download in to your e-mail program. When you have finished in MailWasher Pro, to download your remaining 'good' messages go to your regular e-mail program and push "Send/Receive" ("Check Mail" in Eudora, "Get Msg" in Netscape).
How will I know about MailWasher Pro updates? 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 Firetrust site.
Can I create a link to MailWasher Pro? Do you have an image I can use? Yes you can. Probably the easiest way is to join the affiliate program, and this will supply you with banners you can use. An advantage is that if anyone who buys a copy of MailWasher Pro from clicking on your link will earn you money.
