mail washer pro Message #20 Posted by Ellis Easley on 28 May 2003, 6:07 p.m., in response to message #18 by db(martinez,california)
I don't know about speaking geek but I was intrigued by some of the mannerisms of speech on the firetrust website such as "the ONLY way to deal to senders of junk e-mail" - the use of "deal to" where I would say "deal with". The company is in New Zealand and that must be the way they say it there.
I think the program is great! Basically, it is just an independent (of your regular mail program) way to preview your mail without really opening the files. I don't know why this program can clearly download the data without the mail server noticing, but it's bound to have something to do with the protocol of internet mail - maybe something akin to the way a merchant inquires about your credit card balance at the time of the transaction but doesn't actually charge your account until the time of shipping.
I especially like that mailwasher lets you "bounce" unwanted emails instead of just delete them - the way they describe it, they are able to make your mail server respond in a way that causes the sender to think your email ID is invalid. Whether it really makes a difference or not, it makes me feel that I am doing something! Time will tell if it really reduces the amount of spam delivered to me.
The only thing you have to remember is to run mail washer before you run your email program, or at least before you tell your email program to get your mail from the server. Use mail washer first, let it get your new mail, mark the no good mail to be bounced, mark the emails from those you want remembered as friends, then tell mail washer to "process mail". It then does the bouncing and remembering. When it has finished, it starts up your email program and you tell it to get your mail - which will only be the good items that you said you wanted to receive. Over time, mail from sites you have bounced mail from before is automatically marked "blacklisted" and pre-selected to bounce, mail from "friends" is highlighted. You can read all the text in the message from within mailwasher so you can decide if you want to go ahead and receive mail that would otherwise be bounced.
One thing I have to train myself to do is to click on "Send All" instead of "Send/Receive" when I send an email, otherwise I bypass mail washer for any messages that arrived since I last used mail washer (or since mail washer last automatically checked for new mail).
I started out the hard way when I installed mail washer: I went looking for the items it needs to identify your email accounts (I only have one). It needs your email user name (the left part of your email address), your incoming mail server, your outgoing mail server (you can find both of these under "Tools / Accounts / Properties / Servers" in your mail program [at least Outlook Express]) and your email password (only you know this, although your mail program has probably been remembering it for you, but it won't tell mail washer!) I went and gathered all these things and got mail washer working before I noticed it has an "Import" buttom that would have found everything but my password!
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