Comments on: MailWasher Pro Review – Recommended Anti-Spam Program

By: PIRATE PETE

PIRATE PETE — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:47:59 +0000

Yep, the preview function at the server before it hits your PC is worth it’s weight in gold. At that stage it’s pretty obvious almost at first glance whether it’s likely spam or not. If you’ve steadily blacklisted the nasties on a regular basis there’s not that many newbies coming thru that are particularly time consuming to deal with and you simply have not had to download them. BTW the price for the PRO is now $US19.98 – bargain.

By: Will

Will — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:54:10 +0000

Thanks, Casper. I the article with interest.

The main limitation of the Thunderbird junk filter that I can see is that the filtering takes place *after already downloading the emails*. For me, this was the most time-consuming part of getting rid of spam. It was taking 10 minutes to download a whole lot of crap, 95% percent of which I then deleted.

With MailWasher, the preview function is very quick, which is one of the reasons I like it.

Now I just have to learn not to check MailWasher too much… over-checking email is a real time-waster.

By: Casper

Casper — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:39:36 +0000

Hi Will, here is a brief guide about the antispam feature in Thunderbird.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:47:36 +0000

Hey Casper – thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately my Italian is a bit rusty so I wasn’t able to verify what you say

Your talk of SpamHaus etc. is a bit over my non-technical head, but all I know is that I used to spend 15 to 20 minutes every morning downloading and sorting through dozens if not hundreds of spam emails, and now sorting only takes 1 minute.

Although I use Thunderbird, I wasn’t aware that it had a built in spam filter (and does it preview mails *on the server*). Do you have a link you could point me to?

Cheers, Will

By: Casper

Casper — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:14:14 +0000

I do not recommend MailWasher. Its detection rate is 100% when ORDB and SpamHaus blacklisting networks are used, but drops dramatically to 5,9% (with 5,2% false positives) when those networks are disabled or otherwise unavailable. So why don’t use a free email client (like Thunderbird, 97% detection rate without any connection to external networks)? 37 US$ are a bunch of bucks for a program which is almost useless without the assistance of ORDB and SpamHaus. (Personal test on 3000+ spam messages, details available on my personal web site, unfortunately in Italian only).

Take care

By: Will

Will — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:43:45 +0000

Hi Blaine! I have not checked out Google Apps for Domains yet but I know that the spam filter within GMail is excellent, so if it’s based on similar technology I have no doubt that it would be an excellent solution.

Anyone else have any recommended tools?

Cheers, Will

By: Blaine Moore

Blaine Moore — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:38:20 +0000

I’ve heard good things about Mailwasher, but I’ve been pretty happy with Google Apps for Domains spam filter. It seems to work okay.