Which actually has very little to do with this article, except a similar-sounding word--that word, of course, being spam (with a small “s”—maybe we can be thankful they don’t call it “pimento cheese”.) Legend has it that the relationship between Spam and spam was established by a 1970 Monty Python skit, called “Green Midget Café” where the hapless protagonist and would-be diner, Mr. Bum, can find no menu option besides an endless stream of “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam.” Internet aficionados coined the term “spam” in its honor (?) to indicate an endless stream of something not wanted. Which brings me to the topic I have been promising for several months: my attempt to can my spam.

I installed Firetrust.com’s Mailwasher because I wanted to take another stab at spam filtering before attempting the more draconian, albeit more effective, approach known as challenge/response (more about this later.) I first tried spam filtering via my Microsoft Outlook e-mail program by establishing a “blocked senders” list. I discussed this process in my January article so I won’t go into detail. My Outlook Blocked Senders list, in the long run, didn’t seem to make a dent in my spam. Thus, I bought ($30) and installed a program called “Mailwasher” from a company called Firetrust.com. I have now been using Mailwasher for three months.

Filters take a while to work. Gradually, you build your “blacklist” (spammers) and “whitelist” (friends or acceptable business associates) which then begin to filter your spam. An added bonus is that Firetrust has its own known spammers list from which it can make suggestions for further additions to your blacklist.

Mailwasher also lets you know when a message is not addressed to you (a surprisingly frequent occurrence). Other features worth noting are:

• Easy viewing and editing of blacklist and whitelist
• Ability to blacklist an entire domain
• A (loud) alarm that lets you know when new mail has arrived
• Checkboxes that allow you to delete, bounce and blacklist with a mouse click
• Integrity—when I received an advertising message from Firetrust, the program duly listed the message as spam and recommended firetrust.com as a candidate for my blacklist.

The feature that I like most is the way that Mailwasher sits between my Outlook program and my Internet mail service. Using this feature I am able to preview my incoming mail before I download it to Outlook. This is a good safety feature since many virus attachments exploit Outlook’s security loopholes. Since I can preview my e-mail before it makes it into Outlook, I can use Mailwasher’s built-in mail-handling features to prevent suspect messages from ever touching Outlook.

During an e-mail preview, Mailwasher flags any mail that may contain a virus, is not addressed to me, comes from a blacklisted party, or comes from a source that probably should be blacklisted. This feature allows me to delete or reject several messages before I even open my Outlook program. Since Mailwasher has a preview window, I can peek inside the e-mail without concern that I might be opening a virus or alerting the spammer that I’m a live one.

The most satisfying feature is that I can bounce spam messages. “Bounce” means to return the message to the spammer unopened, giving the impression that my e-mail address does not exist. I don’t know how effective this is, but having a function that is tantamount to revenge is personally satisfying.

Although Mailwasher is on the whole, a useful program, I’ve discovered several disadvantages:

• It encounters a lot of system problems, requiring me to shut down and reopen.
• I have to watch it or it will blacklist people dear to me, like my daughter and my website hosting service. My worst experience was when I signed up for a Clickbank account and was awaiting the verification e-mail. For some reason, Mailwasher decided on the fly to bounce the e-mail, forcing me to contact Clickbank to let them know my e-mail address was indeed live.
• When I download mail to Outlook, occasionally one of the two programs decides that some of the e-mails should go into the “Deleted Items” folder. I haven’t been able to figure out which program did it, or why. I have checked to make sure that the sender is neither on my Mailwasher blacklist nor my Outlook blocked senders list. The mystery here is that I get an e-mail from the same address (and with the same subject line) every week, yet only occasionally does the message get deleted sent to the trash.
• I still get a lot of spam.

Now that I’ve tried the filter approach I may go on to the Challenge-Response anti-spam method. The C/R method is touted as virtually foolproof, since it requires human intervention to get mail through to me. From what I understand about C/R, all e-mail is bounced, and you receive e-mail from only those senders willing to respond to a (hopefully simple) form that is attached to the bounced mail. I felt that this was a somewhat rude approach to wish upon friends and family; however, when nothing else works, this may be the only approach. I assume that you can first establish a “friends” list that will spare your most frequent correspondents the onerous task of filling out such a form.