MailWasher Pro: A POP3 and IMAP Email Spam Filter
MailWasher® Pro
is an email screening program that sits between your email servers and your desktop email client.
It automatically detects spam by scanning the headers, subject and body text of incoming email messages and analyzing the raw source code with both Bayesian learning and user-configurable filters, which include positive and negative conditions and Regular Expressions filters. MailWasher Pro also consults online databases of known spam messages, spam domains and IP addresses, and also checks against a blacklist the user has created of spam senders.
The software has a simple three-step process:
- Checks incoming mail: separates friends from unknowns, or blacklisted names/domains
- Marks known, filtered, or probable spam mail for deletion and/or blacklisting
- Processes email, either manually, or automatically, when a filter condition or blacklist entry is matched
Spam tools now use a weighted approach to recognizing spam, so instead of just one spam tool making the decision about whether an email is spam or not, all spam tools are evaluated to ensure a more accurate evaluation.
MailWasher Pro can be set to auto-delete, display marked as probably spam, or hide messages identified as spam until they are manually deleted by clicking the "Wash Mail" button. Included in the cost of the program is the FirstAlert! global spam honeypot system, developed by FireTrust, the makers of MailWasher® Pro. Once a particular message has been verified as being unsolicited spam, 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 $59.95 to register, for a permanent two computer license (includes all updates to the series). For those wanting to use it on a yearly basis, the price is $29.95 for one year, $38.95 for two years, or $45.95 for three years. The aforementioned prices include all new versions, updates, real-time spam blocking and customer support. Your paid license is good for 2 computers. There is a 90-day, no questions asked money back guarantee.
You can download the latest version of MailWasher Pro here: 
The current version of MailWasher Pro is 2011 build 1.1, which was released on March 23, 2011. Since the re-designed version of MailWasher Pro was released on July, 2010, there have been frequent updates and improvements made to the program. Series 2011 has a totally rewritten interface, touting a brand new spam recognition engine and the use of XML files for lists, settings and filters and a new database for the learning filter. A new setup wizard makes it easier to import and manually enter email accounts and there is a new icon Aero for Windows Vista and Windows 7 PCs. MailWasher Pro 2011 is fully compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7. It does not install or run on older versions of Windows.
The previous series 6, with the old interface, is version 6.54, which was released on May 30, 2010, and last updated on June 13, 2010. MailWasher Pro version 6.x is compatible with most versions of Windows, from W98 through Windows 7.
Read the MailWasher Pro changelog here, for details about fixes and improvements. Registered owners of previous versions of the same series 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 owners of the previous MailWasher Pro series 6 can upgrade to the new version 2011 for only $10.00! Here's how. When you download and install MWP 2011 (or later), the installer will detect that you have a registered previous version and will offer you an upgrade price of $10.00 (US or equiv). If you accept, your browser will open to the Firetrust shopping cart, with the $10.00 price already filled in. Alternately, You can wait until you've tested the program, then upgrade for $10.00, using the Buy button, under Help > Registration, on the upper right side of the program interface. You will still have to pay for annual renewals to keep using the new version after your year has expired.
If you upgrade from a previous registered version of MailWasher Pro to the new 2011 version, all your contacts, most settings (except filters) and email account information will be imported.
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.
- 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, 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!
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