Abigail wrote: But any spammer that cares enough to read and act on the bounce messages HAS researched and noted the exact format of the Mailwasher bounce. It is their business - and what a Mailwasher bounce tells them is that the email address they used was good, because it got delivered. So for the unscrupulous spammers, a Mailwasher bounce is the same as an entry on a phony unsubscribe form -- it tells them that they got through.
Diane replies: I don't quite agree Abigail. You may be right in that the spammer knows that this is a legitimate address, but the mail isn't exactly getting through. Instead of this being a no-longer-valid email address, being bounced back by the mail server, it's a legitimate email address, but the message is deleted without ever being read. This is different from a phony unsubscribe. At least there, the email was opened.
Of course, your point that most spammers don't care is well taken.
I do use mailwasher. I had the free version and was not too happy with its performance. I'm now using the free trial of the pro version. If I do see a decrease in emails, I'll buy it. If not, then I don't know. I do like the idea of not downloading 200-300 emails a day, and of getting rid of most of them at the server level. But I may remove the bounce feature.
Diane
Hi, Diane! Sorry about putting an extra 'n' in your name in my reply to Abigail.
You make a very good point about the MailWasher sending a message to the spammer. I used it in my reply to Abigail.
Abigail makes some very valid arguments for her particular situation, but everyones situstion is different and each person needs to evaluate what works in their own situation and what doesn't and act accordingly.
For my own situation, I couldn't ask for a better solution that I've found with MailWasher Pro, but it's not a 'cure all' for everyone. I like and use the 'bounce' feature extensively - more for psychological satisfaction than for practical purposes. It does appear to have reduced the amount of spam I now receive, but that could just as easily be due to other circumstances as well.
As for not having to download 200-300 emails to my hard disk every day, now that's the main reason I use it and it works for that better than any other method I have tried. Doing it via WebMail is just too slow - especially over a 56k dial-up. Sure, it can be done that way, but usually, only a page at a time with only 15 or 20 headers per page. With MailWasher Pro, most of those I want to delete are already pre-flagged (due to months of use and making extensive use of the online ORDBs) and it's a quick simple chore to check those not yet flagged and bounce and/or delete everything with one click of the button!
Thanks for your comments, Tom
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