Computing & Technology

MailWasher Pro 6.3 - Spam Filter

About.com Rating 4.5 Star Rating

User Rating 5 Star Rating (1 Review) Write a review

By Heinz Tschabitscher, About.com Guide

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MailWasher Pro - Spam Filter

Heinz Tschabitscher

The Bottom Line

MailWasher Pro is a highly competent, usable, secure and time-saving spam filtering tool. Combining multiple approaches, MailWasher Pro achieves a solid spam detection rate and protects you from viruses to some extent, too. Still, MailWasher Pro could be a little bit more comfortable by integrating with email programs better.

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Pros

MailWasher Pro can filter spam precisely using statistics and black/white lists
Optionally, MailWasher Pro profits from the real-time FirstAlert! database of known junk
Supports POP and IMAP accounts as well as Hotmail, MSN and AOL

Cons

MailWasher Pro cannot further categorize and prioritize good mail
It would be great if mail could be viewed, hidden or grouped by status in MailWasher Pro
MailWasher Pro does not offer POP and IMAP proxy filtering

Description

MailWasher Pro is a junk mail filter for POP, IMAP, MSN, Hotmail and AOL email accounts.
You can check, safely preview and delete mail right at the server with MailWasher Pro.
MailWasher Pro uses both powerful rules-based and Bayesian filters to detect spam.
Additionally, it can check DNS blacklists for known spammers and keep local black- and white lists.
As a further option, MailWasher Pro checks FirstAlert!, a community-fed database of known spam.
All spam submitted to FirstAlert! is verified so false positives are practically impossible.
The Bayesian filter used by MailWasher Pro learns with every message and is easy to teach.
MailWasher Pro can bounce mail found to be spam to the sender (I don't recommend this, though).
You can submit spam to Blue Security for active deterrence easily from MailWasher Pro.
MailWasher Pro supports Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/3/XP/Vista.

Guide Review - MailWasher Pro 6.3 - Spam Filter

Out of the box, MailWasher Pro does not look too impressive. One or the other mail is found to be probably spam, and some — not only junk — are blacklisted.

Once you start marking mail as either spam or good mail, though, MailWasher Pro learns quickly. Soon, it is precise about its decisions and saves you lots of time. I just wish MailWasher Pro would offer views that let you see only unclassified mail, for example.

MailWasher Pro also likes to present it as an advantage that it is a separate program instead of being integrated with your email client (or offer a proxy POP/IMAP service). Indeed, you are better shielded from offensive content in MailWasher Pro than in many email clients, and MailWasher Pro even detects potential viruses. Still, having to open and use MailWasher Pro in addition to your email program is a tad inconvenient.

You can safely turn off (at least SpamCop) blacklist look-ups, by the way. They take time, and the false positives are quick to appear when it comes to newsletters. MailWasher Pro has another powerful anti-spam weapon up its sleeve, though.

The FirstAlert! network lists spam that has been submitted by other MailWasher Pro users and verified. If you don't trust the Bayesian filtering, FirstAlert! is a viable alternative that gives you the peace of mind that good mail is very unlikely to be filtered away. In my tests, the spam detection rate was not stellar (yet), though.

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User Reviews

5 out of 5

MailWasher Pro is one of my essential tools, Member Echo0

I love this software. If I am waiting for an important email, I can set it to run every couple of minutes. Otherwise I set it to 90 minutes. I don't have to open my email clients (I use one for one account, another for all the rest) unless there's something I need to act on right away. And the filters are simply marvelous! Once a week I receive a lot of ""out of office"" applies to my newsletter. I have set the filter to flag these as ""out"" and it's simple to go through the list and click on these to delete them upon processing. No downloading things I don't need to see. Similarly, when I receive orders from our online store, two messages always come in. I need one but not the other. I set one to be deleted automatically, without causing it to be marked as spam. The spam filter is excellent. I very rarely have to switch an email from ""good"" to ""spam,"" and as soon as you spam something, it's automatically marked for deletion. The best part, though, is being able to preview email without downloading. Receive a LinkedIn connection request? You can preview that and the links are available in preview, so you can either accept the request from there or check out the person making the request. Then just delete the email before downloading. If you are savvy about problem emails, you'll never accidentally download a suspicious message even if the spam filter missed it. When I finally download my email, it automatically sorts into folders. I get so much that it becomes really difficult to make sure I check them all - and deleting the ones I don't need is much more of a chore from the client than it is from MailWasher, where you can check all of them off and delete with one click instead of going through multiple folders. You can also set up a trash bin if you are worried about making mistakes in deleting. MailWasher Pro is one piece of software I would never want to be without.

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