MailWasher Pro
MailWasher® Pro
is an email screening program that automatically detects spam by scanning the headers, subject and body text, consulting online databases of known spam, checking against a blacklist the user has created and analyzing incoming raw source code with both Bayesian learning and user-configurable filters, which include positive and negative conditions and Regular Expressions filters.
The software has a simple three-step process:
- Checks incoming mail: separates friends from unknowns, or blacklisted names/domains
- Marks known or probable spam mail for deletion, and/or bounce, and/or blacklisting
- Processes email, either manually, or automatically, when a filter condition is matched
MailWasher Pro can be set to auto-delete, display marked as probably spam, or hide messages identified as spam until they are manually deleted, and now includes an option to forward spam directly to your SpamCop account for reporting. There is an optional, plug-in, global spam reporting system, developed by FireTrust, the makers of MailWasher® Pro, known as FirstAlert!. It is comprised of millions of MailWasher Pro users, who submit spam messages directly from the program's user interface to a central database. The FirstAlert! system employs people around the clock to verify that each sample sent to FirstAlert! is truely spam, by the most widely accepted definition, and not some newsletter or product update that the submitter forgot about signing up to receive. Once a particular message has been verified as being unsolicited spam, by two separate people, it is added to the global spam database used by FirstAlert! subscribers. When you check your email in MailWasher Pro, FirstAlert! dynamically trains your filters so you get the latest spam filtering capability. Known spam can be automatically deleted, or marked as spam, for your review.
Because MailWasher Pro displays messages in plain text, and can display the raw source code, dangerous messages, viruses, or other unwanted huge files can be identified by sight, then safely deleted off the email server. MailWasher Pro can be set to check for new messages on whatever interval you desire, and now includes a button to quick-reply to incoming messages, using your default email program. The program supports all POP3, Hotmail, MSN, AOL/Netscape, and IMAP accounts, as well as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Authentication, and can check unlimited email accounts simultaneously, or sequentially. MailWasher Pro is free to try for 30 days, and costs only $39.95 to register, which includes FREE MailWasher program updates for life, plus, a one year, renewable subscription to the FirstAlert! spam reporting system, described in the previous paragraph.
MailWasher Pro comes with a 6 month satisfaction guarantee. If you're not happy with your purchase of MailWasher Pro, at any time in 180 days following your purchase, Firetrust, the makers of MailWasher, will give you a full, no questions asked refund.
The current version of MailWasher Pro is 6.3, which was released on October 8, 2008 and contains 6 fixes, one addition and several tweaks. MailWasher series 6 has a new look from the previous versions and has lots of bug fixes, plus it is now compatible with Windows Vista. One big change that may confuse folks who upgrade from earlier versions is that the incoming message log is no longer found under "Statistics," but is now accessed via the "Recycle Bin" button, which is now on the main interface. Read the changelog here, for details about fixes and improvements. Registered owners of previous versions can just install the newest version over your existing version and all settings will carry forward (but close the version you are running first). After upgrading I would open and close MailWasher Pro once. This seems to fix an occasional problem I just began seeing, where your filters, lists and accounts are not immediately imported into the newer version. Closing and reopening the new program fixes that. If you use a software firewall you may need to authorize the change in the program's filesize signature.
Registered users of can upgrade to the newest version at no additional charge.
As I mentioned earlier, a one year subscription to the FirstAlert! spam reporting system is included for free, with your initial purchase of a MailWasher Pro license. Enrollment thereafter is optional. If you want to keep using FirstAlert, after the first free year has elapsed, it has an annual subscription rate of $19.95 USD (as of 2/20/2008).
Get your trial copy, or purchase MailWasher® Pro, here!
We use MailWasher Pro to screen all incoming email, using all of it's built-in tools, plus hand-selected blocklists and our own blacklist, regular expressions and known spam-domain filters.
Here are some of the custom filter actions we have created for MailWasher Pro:
- Dangerous attachment detection. Alerts if a possible virus or worm is attached. File extensions are added as threats are made public.
- Image filenames with a second, often hidden executable extension, identified and auto-deleted.
- Base64 alerts. Many spam emails are encoded in Base64 to get past spam filters.
- HTML comment tricks, to hide spam trigger words from filters, detected and deleted.
- Auto-delete repeat spammers by details in the email headers, or by their Domains in message bodies.
- Detection of spammers forging our domains in the From field. We report these to SpamCop.
- De-obfuscating broken words that spell drug names, used in spam subjects and bodies.
- De-obfuscation of broken word male or female enhancement spams, with auto-delete.
- Recognition of forged sender headers, invalid IP addresses, or IP addresses from particular areas of the World.
- Blocking filters to auto-delete repeat spam from known spammers and Spamvertized websites.
- We also have a rule to block most (but not all) 419 Nigerian scam emails.
- Our image spam filter rules have their own thread on the CastleCops MailWasher® Pro forum.
- Our custom MailWasher filter rules are mentioned and linked to in the CastleCops MailWasher® Pro Wiki.
- View our custom MailWasher Pro filters.txt on this page. They are ready copy and paste from an iframe, or download as filters.txt, in long (comprehensive) and short versions (faster). These rules will block or flag up to 99% of the current incoming spam, scams and viruses, and are updated frequently to respond to changes in spam techniques.
- You can download the latest version of MailWasher Pro here:
Since spammers usually forge the From and Reply To fields in their headers (making blocking by email addresses useless), we always report any spam that eludes our filters to SpamCop and FirstAlert!, using the built-in checkboxes in MailWasher Pro. We then read the parsed technical results on the SpamCop reporting-details page and add any applicable identifying Domain information to our own filters, even including Base64 encoded URLs. This ensures that we won't be bothered a second time by these scumbags. It's a bit of work, but pays off in the long run.
Current versions of MailWasher Pro include a Bayesian Learning Filter that recognizes and analyzes what we report as spam, and often deletes similar messages, without us adding them to our custom filters. We see very few false alerts or incorrect deletions.
In those rare instances where one of these filters auto-deletes a legitimate message it can be restored, as long as you have enabled the built-in recycle bin. We always view restored messages in our regular email client, since MailWasher thinks it was spam. After parsing the headers and body we fine-tune the offending filter to avoid deleting this type of message. Hey, no-one's perfect!
We would be happy to assist anybody who purchases MailWasher Pro through a link on our website with creating their own filter rules and blacklists. Get your trial copy, or purchase MailWasher® Pro, here!
Introducing Firetrust Benign®
Your email inbox is a dangerous place these days. Viruses, worms, trojans, and a host of other nasties pose a daily threat to your PC and all of the data stored in it.
These threats can easily come in under the radar of even the best conventional anti-virus programs. Worryingly, the majority of computers connected to the Internet have already been infected at least once. This probably includes yours.
You see, the problem with your current anti-virus program is that it is always out-of-date. When a new virus emerges and starts wreaking havoc on the world, the anti-virus companies must scramble to devise a solution and then send it out to all their customers. This all takes time - time you haven't got! By the time your AV program is updated, the damage might already have been done. Someone else might be controlling your PC - or even worse, going on a spending spree with your credit card!
At Firetrust, they like to think differently about safeguarding your computer - and they've come up with something better.
Firetrust Benign® is a revolutionary approach to inbox protection. It neutralizes all current and future viruses, scripts and web bugs -- before they even get to your inbox, and is a perfect companion to MailWasher Pro!
Firetrust Benign® currently costs $39.95 to register, with free upgrades for the life of the product. Order Benign® here!
Don't take chances with your data! Now you can protect your files and your email attachments with the most advanced security available.
Firetrust Encrypt is an easy-to-use encryption solution, which enables you to send or save data in a 256-bit encrypted format, which can then only be decrypted and opened by entering a password set by you.
Feel confident in emailing confidential information to colleagues, partners, customers or personal relations. The receiver requires no specialized software, just a web browser and the password you have chosen.
You can also encrypt sensitive information on your computer to keep prying eyes from viewing it. Get all this security for only $29.95!
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