Topic: Mailwasher/E-Prompter Warning

[chorleydave]

Hi everybody.

As I have posted quite a few times, I get very few spam e-mails, never more than four a day, and more often than not none at all.  I have always put this down to using Spamgourmet disposable addresses for signing up to forums, newsgroups, etc. and using Mailwasher to "bounce back" the few I do get.  I have also used E-Prompter to check mail on the server, and occasionally delete it using this program.

However, about a month ago  I removed Mailwasher and E-Prompter from my PC and downloaded Simon's recommendation, "PopTray".  After just a few weeks of checking waiting mail and deleting spam on the server with PopTray, spam has dried up completely - I haven't had any at all for about eight days now.

As a result, I have reached the conclusion that using Mailwasher and E-Prompter actually caused me to get some spam, albeit  very little.  I suspect that by using Mailwasher to "bounce back" mail, rather than making spammers think the address doesn't exist anymore, actually lets them know that the address is active, although I haven't worked out how, yet.  I expect they could find out by checking the message source of a bounced back e-mail, but could they be bothered?  Furthermore, I suspect than E-Prompter harvests addresses set up in it and passes them on.

I know this might seem a bit far fetched, but it seems too much to be a mere coincidence that since  I dropped the previous programs for PopTray I get no spam at all.

[Simon]

Never used E-Prompter, so can't comment on that, but I stopped 'bouncing' mail with Mailwasher some time ago (and have advised others to do the same), as I did start to get more spam when I was 'bouncing'.  It is supposed to appear to the sender as Mail Undeliverable, but as you say, Dave, I think there must be something that gives the game away, and it just confirms to the spammers that the mail account is active.  I actually use both MW and Pop Tray now.  Not at the same time, I switch between the two, as the mood takes me.  If one of my mail servers happens to be down, I do sometimes find the constant warnings with MW irritating, at which point I switch to Pop Tray for a while.

[Clive]

I stopped using MailWasher when BT amalgamated with Yahoo to form BT/Yahoo.  The Yahoo spam filter is almost 100% accurate and it scans for viruses too.  I always check my spam box on a daily basis to make sure that all is well and usually get around 300 spam messages and 10 viruses every day. And it seems to be getting worse each month.  :'(

[Delgado]

Here is another mail checker that I am using.

   http://www.poppeeper.com/

 WOrks on Pop Accounts and Hotmail, and notifies you when mail is available by sound or visual in the system tray. You can view the mail or delete as you will, or you can open your e-mail client. Also automatically sets up your Pop Accounts from your e-mail client. First class, and well recommended.

   

[Barra]

I'm stioll using Incredimail. It has recently included a good spamfilter which very well + Plusnet now has its own spamfilter and virus checker. Between them they seem to be working well.As Clive says, it's worth checking every day just to make sure that genuine mail doesn't get dumped