Mailwasher
Mailwasher is a software program that allows you to see all of your email while it's
still on the server and select what you want and don't want to download to your computer, if that's how you read your email. It also starts learning spam,
having some filters already built in to catch known spam domains, and allows you the option of determining which email you always want to come through
by identifying it as friendly, or which stuff you want to always block by making the determination to blacklist it. The best thing about it is that nothing
happens to any mail you, or the program, identifies until you've made a decision, and even if you make the wrong one, you can retrieve an email for a period
of time, usually up to a week or so.
As we all know, one of the things we deal with on a daily basis is not only all the spam, but the viruses that sometimes come with this stuff, as well as the
email that's sometimes somewhat tricky in trying to determine whether it's legitimate or not. The way Mailwasher works is that, at the top, you see a list
of all your emails, and at the bottom you get a visual of just what's in the email. You get to determine how many lines of text, or whatever, it is you want to
see so that you can make a good decision. This come in handy when you get email that says it's from eBay or Paypal, or whomever else, because, instead of
just receiving a link telling you that, if you click it, that's where you're going, you see exactly what the link is, and if it's not going to where you know it's
supposed to go then you definitely know it's a fake. Also, if you know that someone who sends you email on a regular basis always has a tagline of some kind,
even if it's only their name at the bottom, and it's missing from the email you're receiving, you'll also know it didn't come from them and can delete that also.
With Mailwasher, you get to set the categories you want to see, so that you can identify who you're getting email from and its topic, decide by clicking in a box
whose mail should or should not be blocked, dates, and the size of the emails. You can also have it check multiple email addresses, and, if you so choose, you
can have it bounce emails you don't want back to the originator. This option isn't the best, though, because, at first, you might think you're getting back at
spammers by trying to send them back their own emails; however, you quickly learn that either you'll get that same email back as an address unknown email,
or you're just confirming that your email address may be legitimate, which opens you up to even more spam coming your way.
One thing you can't do, which is a good thing, is see either pictures or movie files. You also won't see other attachments of any kind, which is also a good
thing; all of this email is still on the server after all. However, because you're seeing the size of the email, it'll be easy after a very short time to know which
emails have attachments and which ones don't, and the size of an email becomes very important if you have a slow connection because you have the option
of deleting those large files before they shut down your email program, if you download email, or opening up some of your emails online, if you have that
option, and downloading those files in a much different way, if you really need them.
Mailwasher is a no-brainer program to recommend, even moreso than many other programs
which will check each and every email that's being downloaded onto your computer, though those programs aren't bad as a backup. Mailwasher is only so
good, because sometimes, in the process of downloading your email, a very recent email you don't want might be popping in at the same time; it happens
to me all the time because of the volume of email I receive. But it's a wonderful program, worth the price (they even give you a 30-day trial), and you can
check out the screenshots to see what it's all about.
