VCOM SystemSuite MailWasher

How does MailWasher work?
How do I start using MailWasher?
What is spam?

Setup

Which operating systems does MailWasher run on?
What are the minimum requirements to run MailWasher?
Which e-mail programs does MailWasher work with?
Which mail protocols does MailWasher support?
Does MailWasher run in the background?
Which email client will MailWasher start up?
Why do I get an error when trying to start my email client? Or, how do I specify a default email client?
How do I switch off automatic checking in my email program?
I'm having problems with MailWasher connecting to the internet, what can I do?

Accounts

Can I import my existing accounts in to MailWasher?
What are my POP and SMTP settings?
Why does MailWasher not import the password from my account?
How many accounts may I have?
How do I stop automatically checking an account?
Can I use Compuserve with MailWasher?
Can I use Hotmail with MailWasher?
Can I use Yahoo with MailWasher?
Can I use MSN with MailWasher?
What does the 'Enable bouncing of messages from this account' mean?
What is APOP?
What do the 'Advanced bouncing options' mean?

Main Window

What does the status column mean?
How can I change the order of the columns?
How can I classify my incoming emails by sorting them?

Bouncing messages

How does MailWasher bounce messages?
What does the bounced message look like?
I can’t bounce messages!
Why do I get the error message “Error sending bounce messages for account ‘yourname’, SMTP host SMTP.yourisp.prefix refused access”
Will the spammers know I am bouncing emails?
Why are my friends getting their emails bounced back to them?
Why do I get my bounced message back?
I own my own domain name, and spam gets bounced back to me?
What do the 'Advanced bouncing options' mean?

Deleting messages

How does MailWasher delete messages?
Can I get deleted messages back?

Preview

How do I preview an email?
Why does MailWasher only preview in txt format, and not HTML?

General tab

How can I change the new mail notification sound?
What is a DNS spam Blacklist server?
What benefit is it to me?
Which lists are provided and, are there more?
What about MAPS RBL? Isn't that the most well regarded blacklist database?
What is heuristic checking?

Blacklist

How does the blacklist work?
How do I enter an address in to the Blacklist?
Can I import an existing blacklist?
Why don't big imported spam lists work with MailWasher?
How does the shared Blacklist and Friends list file work?
Why can I import the junk senders file from Outlook into MailWasher, but I can’t with Outlook Express?
How do the ‘auto-delete and auto-bounce’ options work?
How does the ‘mark blacklisted messages’ work?
What are the numbers beside the email addresses in the text file?

Friends list

How does the friends list work?
How do I enter an address in to the friends list?
Can I transfer my address book in to the friends list?
How does the shared Blacklist and Friends list file work?
What is the 'Display emails received from friends' tick box for?
What are the numbers beside the email addresses in the text file?

Filters

How does a filter work?
Can you show me an example?
Do you have any filters I can download?
What does RegExpr mean?
How can I make a regular expression filter?
Example 1 - How can I filter any emails that have a blank subject line?
Example 2 - How can I filter out words in certain parts of sentences?
Can I import existing filters?
Why would I use different colours for my filters?
How does the 'precedence' feature work?
How can I block foreign character sets?

Miscellaneous

It seems to me that spam increases over holiday periods.
How can I change the email notification sound?
How am I notified visually if there is new mail?
What keyboard commands can I use with MailWasher?
Why are my emails being deleted after previewing?
Where are the registry settings for MailWasher?
Don’t spammers use email authentication programs to see if your email address is valid?
How do I move messages from MailWasher to my email program?
Does MailWasher contain any spyware?
I have installed MailWasher but can’t find it. Where is it?
Who are the people behind MailWasher?
How can I get in touch with you?
I have other questions, not answered here.
Can I have a copy of the source code?
I have a suggestion for a feature for MailWasher.

Overview

Q.        How does MailWasher work?
A.        MailWasher works directly with your email server, exactly like your email program does. But there is one important difference: you can tell MailWasher to delete a message at the server, without downloading it - or you can bounce an email back to the sender so that it looks as though your address is not valid.

MailWasher retrieves information about all the emails on the server. With that information (some of which is also processed by MailWasher) you can decide what to do with each individual email - download, delete, or bounce back.

If you check your account with MailWasher first, you can delete or bounce the emails you do not want. Then, when you use your email program, it downloads only the remaining emails, those that you want to read.
MailWasher can be thought of as a "first line of defence" which can weed out junk, large wasteful attachments, and potentially harmful viruses.

Q.        How do I start using MailWasher?
A.        To begin using MailWasher, here's all you need to do.

To check email, don't open your email client first. Instead, just start MailWasher by double clicking on the desktop icon, or going to Start menu, Programs, then MailWasher.

The MailWasher program will then start and will tell you what messages you have waiting for you on the email server. In the check boxes, select whether to Delete or Bounce the messages (if nothing is checked, the emails will simply be downloaded to your email client as normal), and then select process mail. Processing mail will delete or bounce the emails you have selected. Your email client will open and you can download the remaining emails as you normally do.
Q.        What is spam?
A.        Spam is another word for unsolicited junk email.

Setup

Q.        Which operating systems does MailWasher run on?
A.        Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP and XP Pro.
Q.        What are the minimum requirements to run MailWasher?
A.        4 Mb of RAM, 4Mb of disk space, and an Internet connection.
Q.        Which email programs does MailWasher work with?
A.        MailWasher works independently of other email programs so it doesn’t matter which one you use.
Q.        Which mail protocols does MailWasher support?
A.        At this stage only POP3 is supported. For Hotmail and MSN support as well as future IMAP and AOL support, you can purchase MailWasher Pro.

Q.        Does MailWasher run in the background?

A.        If you have a permanent connection to the internet, you can set MailWasher to automatically check mail at a pre-determined interval via the tools, options menu.
Q.        Which email client will MailWasher start up?
A.        MailWasher will use your default email client.
Q.        Why do I get an error when trying to start my email client? Or, how do I specify a default email client?
A.        You may not have specified a default email client, to change this you will need to fiddle with the registry, but its not too difficult.

Go to the Windows start menu, click on 'run', type 'regedit' in the box Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, follow the path to Software\Clients\Mail and change the Default Key to 'Outlook Express', 'Netscape Messenger' or another email application.
Q.        How do I switch off automatic checking in my email program?
A.        The following are instructions for the more common email programs.

Netscape
Select Edit, then Preferences from the Netscape main menu.

Open the Mail & Newsgroups section and go to Mail Servers.

Select the desired e-mail account from the Incoming Mail Servers list, and click on the Edit button.

Deselect the option labeled Check for mail every ( ) minutes.

Outlook Express
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu.

Uncheck the options labeled Send and receive messages at startup and Check for new messages every ( ) minute(s).

Outlook
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu.

Click on the Internet E-mail tab.

Uncheck the option labeled Check my local network connections for new mail every ( ) minute(s).

Eudora
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu.

Select Checking Mail from the icon list on the left.

Enter 0 in the input box labeled Check for mail every ( ) minute(s).

Pegasus
Select Tools, then Options from the main menu.

Click on the Network tab, then on the button labeled Advanced network configuration options.

Enter 0 in the input box labeled Check for new POP3 mail every ( ) secs.

Q.        I'm having problems with MailWasher connecting to the internet, what can I do?
A.        Error: Could not connect to the internet, or DNS failed.

1. Go to the control panel, click on 'Internet options' and then go to the 'connections' tab and make sure 'Always dial my default connection' is selected.

2. If you're running a version of Norton's Anti virus earlier than 2002, you'll notice a 'nortons reference' in the POP account settings. It will look like this - 'pop3.norton.antivirus'. Remove the Norton references from the account info and just use your normal POP connection details. This won't affect your system security as MailWasher only checks messages on the server in text mode so viruses and scripts can't be run. Norton's AV will catch anything else when you download the email through your e-mail client.

3. Make sure you can receive POP3 emails. There are other Internet connection protocols available but which MailWasher does not support at present, although POP3 is by far the most common.

Accounts

Q.        Can I import my existing account in to MailWasher?
A.        Yes, click on the Tools menu, then the accounts menu. There you will see a button to import your existing account.
Q.        What are my POP and SMTP settings?
A.        POP is your incoming mail setting and SMTP is your outgoing mail setting. You will need to consult your documentation your internet provider supplied you with when you signed up.
Q.        Why does MailWasher not import the password from my account?
A.        Your email password is encrypted and has to be entered again by you.
Q.        How many accounts may I have?
A.        This version of Mailwasher only supports one account. If you wish to have multiple accounts, then upgrade to MailWasher Pro.
Q.        How do I stop automatically my account?
A.        In the tools menu-accounts-properties box, remove the tick from ‘Include this account in default mail check’.
Q.        Can I use Compuserve with MailWasher?
A.        Yes. You need a "mail-only password", also known as a "POP3 password". If you don't already have one, you can create one via "GO NPX-92" on CompuServe. Note that your "User name (POP3)" inside MailWasher's account details should *not* be e.g. "johnsmith@compuserve.com" but instead your original numerical login, e.g. "123456,1234". The POP3 server is pop.compuserve.com, and if you're dialing in via CompuServe use smtp.compuserve.com as the SMTP server (otherwise use smtp.[your_normal_ISP].com etc.). APOP/MSN secure authentication should be OFF: CompuServe uses Virtual Key (RPA) instead, but this is not supported by MailWasher and is in any case not necessary if you use your "mail-only password".

If your email address ends in @cs.com instead of @compuserve.com then this won't work for you as an email address with the @cs.com ending is part of AOL and AOL is not supported yet.
Q.        Can I use Hotmail with MailWasher?
A.        The Standard version of MailWasher does not support Hotmail accounts. If you wish to have Hotmail support, then upgrade to MailWasher Pro.
Q.        Can I use Yahoo with MailWasher?
A.        Yes, to set up a POP account with Yahoo go to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/pop/
Q.        Can I use MSN with MailWasher?
A.        The standard version of MailWasher does not support MSN accounts. If you wish to have MSN account support, then upgrade to MailWasher Pro.
Q.        What does the 'Enable bouncing of messages from this account' mean?
A.        If you don't want to use the bounce feature, you can disable it by unchecking this box for each account. It is ticked to bounce by default.
Q.        What is APOP?
A.        This is a POP3 setting that encrypts your username and password when checking your mail - not all internet providers support this, but it will probably be widely used eventually.
Q.        What do the 'Advanced bouncing options' mean?
A.        The 'Use remote SMTP servers only' is ticked by default.

Use remote SMTP server only : the system performs an MX DNS look-up on the hostname of the destination e-mail address. If the MX look-up fails, the bounce is aborted. For each MX record returned, the system attempts to send the message directly to that SMTP server. If any server returns a permanent failure code (5xx), the bounce is aborted.

Use local SMTP server only: the system sends a bounce message through the SMTP server specified in the account options.

Use remote SMTP server with local fallback: The system performs a remote SMTP send as described above. If there are MX servers present but none were available to connect to, the system performs a local SMTP send instead. If there are MX servers present and all of them return a temporary error code (4xx), the system performs a local SMTP send. Otherwise the bounce is aborted.

Main Window

Q.        What does the status column mean?
A.        The status column shows the analysis of an email by MailWasher as normal, probable or possible spam, possible or probably virus or virus. This is also where a custom filter status is shown.
Q.        How can I change the order of the columns?
A.        In the tools menu, click on Option. In the General tab, the Column Order box will let you select or deselect and change the column order of the columns.

Q.        How can I classify my incoming emails by sorting them?

A.        Click on any of the column headers to sort them by that header.

Bouncing messages

Q.        How does MailWasher bounce messages?
A.        MailWasher uses an algorithm to determine the best route to send the bounced message back (from, reply to, return path) and actually sends the bounce back via your ISP's postmaster, so it looks exactly like it has come from your ISP and not from you at your address. If the spammer has used a fake address, then your bounce message will itself be bounced back to the postmaster and you won't receive the bounced bounce email.
Q.        What does the bounced message look like?
A.        Send yourself an email, then bounce it. The message will be bounced back to the sender and they will receive an email similar to a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an email to a wrong address.
Q.        I can’t bounce messages!
A.        Make sure the SMTP settings are correct. Another reason you may not be able to bounce messages is you are bouncing messages for an account that is not the same as your dial up provider. To get around this problem, make the SMTP settings for your account is the same as your dial up provider.

Q.        Why do I get the error message “Error sending bounce messages for account ‘yourname’, SMTP host SMTP.yourisp.prefix refused access”

A.        This is because your dial up provider does not allow relaying (sending an email from one provider via another provider). To get around this problem, make the SMTP settings for all your accounts to be the same as your dial up provider.
Q.        Will the spammers know I am bouncing emails?
A.        No, the bounced messages look exactly like a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an email off to a wrong address. There is no way the spammers can tell it is not genuine.
Q.        Why are my friends getting their emails bounced back to them?
A.        You may have tested out the bouncing when you first started the program in which case their names will be in the blacklist. Go to the Tools menu, Option, and click on the Blacklist tab and locate your friends name and delete it.
Q.        Why do I get my bounced message back?
A.        This may be because of two things.

1. When MailWasher sends a bounce email, it sends it via the postmaster of your internet service provider so it looks exactly like it is a genuine bounced email. If the message that you are trying to bounce has a false return address then you will receive a non deliverable bounced email which will further clutter your inbox - this is because you own your own domain and all the mail is fed in to that domain. This doesn't happen if you have an address from a internet service provider - they get the non deliverable bounced email back to their inbox. To stop the non deliverable emails coming back in to your inbox, enter the address MAILER-DAEMON@mydomain.com in the blacklist and set it to auto delete. (where mydomain.com is actually the domain you own)

Some ISP's may modify all the emails sent so that they contain the real email address in both the 'from' field and 'reply-to' field. There is nothing much we can do about this as this as we can't control it, we would suggest you not use the bounce feature in this case.
Q.        I own my own domain name, and spam gets bounced back to me?
A.        When MailWasher sends a bounce email, it sends it via the postmaster of your Internet service provider so it looks exactly like it is a genuine bounced e-mail. If the message that you are trying to bounce has a false return address then you will receive a non deliverable bounced email which will further clutter your inbox - this is because you own your own domain and all the mail is fed in to that domain. This doesn't happen if you have an address from an Internet Service Provider - they get the non deliverable bounced email back to their inbox.

To stop the non deliverable emails coming back in to your inbox, enter the address MAILER-DAEMON@mydomain.com in the blacklist and set it to auto delete. (where mydomain.com is actually the domain you own)

Deleting messages

Q.        How does MailWasher delete messages?
A.        MailWasher deletes email directly off your internet providers server before it is downloaded.
Q.        Can I get deleted messages back?
A.        Unfortunately not, you may be able to contact your internet service provider and see if they back up their messages. Otherwise you will have to write back to the sender if you can remember them and ask for their message again.

Preview

Q.        How do I preview an email?
A.        Double click on any email that is showing. A pop-up window will appear and download the contents for you to view in that window. You can stop viewing at any time by clicking the cross in the corner to exit.
Q.        Why does MailWasher only preview in text format, and not HTML?
A.        HTML can carry viruses and other scripts which can run when viewed. Although HTML is easier to read and better to look at, it is potentially harmful to view HTML emails if you are unsure of where they have come from.

General tab

Q.        How can I change the new mail notification sound?
A.        Do this via the sounds icon in the Control Panel of Windows. Go to Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel and click on the Sounds icon. The sound you want to change is the ‘New Mail Notification’.
Q.        What is a DNS spam Blacklist server?
A.        This is a site that hosts a list of known hosts that let, or have been known to send spam in the past.
Q.        What benefit is it to me?
A.        When checking your mail in MailWasher, any new emails will be checked against these lists to see if the email comes from a known source of spam. This will be listed in the 'status' column on the main screen. These emails will automatically be marked for bounce and delete.
Q.        Which lists are provided and are there more?
A.        ORDB, VISI and SpamCop are built in, but you can add more if you want.

Other free blacklists are:
outputs.orbz.org
inputs.orbz.org
ztl.dorkslayers.com
blackholes.intersil.net
blackholes.wirehub.net

The listed ones in MailWasher are:
relays.visi.com
relays.ordb.org
bl.spamcop.net

Q.        What about MAPS RBL? Isn't that the most well regarded blacklist database?
A.        Yes it is the most well regarded database, but while it used to be free it is no longer so. You can still sign up for one hobbyist licence for free, but it is restricted to one IP address only.
Q.        What is heuristic checking?
A.        MailWasher is able to examine each email it views for suspicious signs that it may be spam or a virus and to warn you. MailWasher lets you have different strengths of checking to help identify suspicious emails.

Blacklist

Q.        How does the blacklist work?
A.        Any email address on the blacklist will either be automatically deleted and bounced or be able to be viewed prior to bouncing. Any emails you decide to bounce will automatically be added to the blacklist. You can easily delete any entries in the blacklist.
Q.        How do I enter an address in to the Blacklist?
A.        There are a few ways.

Press the 'Add' button in the 'Blacklist/friends list' tab and you can either enter a whole address or…

Use a wildcard to enter anyone, say for example, all emails from the same domain that you get sent junk from. eg. *@mailwasher.net would catch anyone from MailWasher.net, and ????@mailwasher.net would catch anyone with a four letter name who works at MailWasher.

You can bring up another column on the main screen which will be labeled 'Blacklist' - do this by going to Tools, Options, General tab and ticking the 'Blacklist' option in the Column Order box. This makes it easy to 'tick' your junk emailers as they send you emails.

Q.        Can I import an existing blacklist?
A.        Yes, if the existing blacklist is a plain text file of email addresses. The blacklist file is located in the application data directory, this can be located by selecting About in the Help menu and clicking on the link. Just copy and paste your new addresses in to the blacklist file in that directory.
Q.        Why don't big imported spam lists work with MailWasher?
A.        If you use Windows 95,98, or Me these operating systems have a limit of 32,000 characters for a list and will stop MailWasher working properly if the list is too big. A good (large) list can be found at http://www.gaznet.au.com/spam/download.htm
Q.        Why can I import the junk senders file from Outlook into MailWasher, but I can’t with Outlook Express?
A.        Outlook has it’s Junk Senders List as a plain text file and can be easily added to MailWasher’s blacklist file. Outlook Express has it’s Junk Sender’s List in the registry which cannot be exported as a text file.
Q.        How do the ‘auto-delete and auto-bounce’ options work?
A.        As soon as your mail is checked on the server, and identified as being from a sender in the blacklist, it is bounced directly from the server to the sender and deleted so you never actually see it.
Q.        How does the ‘mark blacklisted messages’ work?
A.        Blacklist emails will still show up on the main screen for you to preview and decide if you want to bounce them. So they won’t be automatically bounced off the server before you view them.

Friends list

Q.        How does the friends list work?
A.        The friends list is where you enter all the addresses that you want to mark as being legitimate, this way they will not be confused as being labeled as spam or similar.
Q.        How do I enter an address in to the friends list?
A.        There are a few ways.

Press the 'Add' button in the 'Blacklist/friends list' tab and you can either enter a whole address or…

Use a wildcard to enter anyone, say for example, all emails from the same company as your friend. eg. *@mailwasher.net would let anyone from MailWasher.net be entered as your friend, and ????@mailwasher.net would let anyone with a four letter name who works at MailWasher be entered as your friend.

You can bring up another column on the main screen which will be labeled 'friends' - do this by going to Tools, Options, General tab and ticking the 'Friends list' option in the Column Order box. This makes it easy to 'tick' your friends as they send you emails.

Q.        Can I transfer my address book in to the friends list?
A.        If you can export your address book to a text (.txt) file then yes you can. The friends list is actually at the bottom of the blacklist (contained in the application data directory which can be located by selecting About in the Help menu and clicking on the link), so you can just copy and paste the addresses there.
Q.        How does the shared Blacklist and Friends list file work?
A.        If you wish to share the blacklist/friends list across a network or locate the file in another directory then you will need to know this.

The blacklist/friends list can be located in another directory, but you can't write to it (enter another name) as there are both user and technical complications if users try to change it at the same time. So any additions or subtractions to the list are made in the blacklist/friends list in your MailWasher application data directory.

So the list that is shared should contain shared friends names and blacklisted addresses, and any additions or subtractions to this list are made in your own blacklist/friends list in the MailWasher application data directory.
Q.        What is the 'Display emails received from friends' tick box for?
A.        One way to deal with a whole lot of email is to change the friends list in this way - in the friends list options tab (Tools, Options, Friends/blacklist tab - Friends Options button), uncheck 'Display emails received from friends' so people in your friends list won't be shown - this allows you to go through your list very quickly - and then hold down the shift key at the same time as selecting the emails to delete, right click and select mark message for deletion, then you can go through what is left and unmark those from friends. After a while you will have lots of people in the friends list (which won't be shown) and all the junk shows up which can be marked for deletion. You can then go back and tick the 'show emails from friends' box to see what your friends have sent you, or simply download them.
Q.        What are the numbers beside the email addresses in the text file?
A.        They are the date the address last matched an email (for expiry purposes), if the number is missing then the current date is assumed.

Filters

Q.        How does a filter work?
A.        You can set up your own filters to identify any emails that meet certain criteria. For example, you may want to identify all emails that have the words 'Dear Friend' in the body of the email, or all emails that have a Microsoft word attachment.
Q.        Can you show me an example?
A.        1. To identify all emails with 'Dear Friend' in the body of the email.
In the rules section you would make "The body" "contains" "Dear Friend", you could even attach a name to the rule and what action MailWasher is to take with the email.

2. To identify all emails with a Microsoft word attachment. (.doc)
In the rules section you would make "The body" "contains" ".doc" This would identify any email with a word document attached (or any part of text that had the words .doc).
Q.        Do you have any filters I can download?
A.        Yes! Thanks to the work of a whole lot of people, here's a link to a big list of filters. Just download it and add it into your filters list!

MailWasher Filters
Q.        What does RegExpr mean?
A.        Regular expression.

Regular expressions are tools that look like comic-book expletives (#!?#@!!#) but can be very powerful when used to filter emails. Regular expressions are used to recognize patterns within emails. Regular expressions evaluate the text of your email and return an answer of true or false. That is, either the expression correctly describes the text of you email, or it doesn't. This enables you to specify a filter to easily identify certain kinds of email text or patterns.
Q.        How can I make a regular expression filter?
A.        They take a bit of getting used to, but here is a basic outline and some more common examples below you may like to use yourself.

Character typed What it represents Example

Any character Represents the character typed, with the exception of the special characters defined below a represents a, b represents b, etc

. Any character (except line breaks) Will match c,3, space, etc

\d Any digit Will match 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, or 9

\D Any non digit Will match anything except 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9

^ Beginning of line

$ End of line

\t Tab \thello matches 'hello' preceded by a tab

\r Line break (return)

\s Whitespace Matches any whitespace character (space,tab,line break,newline)

\S Non whitespace Matches any non white space character

\w Word characters Typically letters, numbers and underscores

\W Non word characters Matches any non word character

\character Represents a character that is normally a special character The special characters are .#^$\?+*|[]()

[any series of character] Represents any of the characters inside the brackets. [abc] represents a,b, or c

[any character-another character] Represents any characters within the range of characters specified [a-c] represents a,b, or c

[^any series of characters] Represents any character except the ones specified after the ^ [^c3] represents any character except c or 3

? Represents 0 or 1 of the previous character ba?t matches bat or bt, but not boat

* Represents 0 or more of the previous character ba*t matches bt, bat, baat, etc.

+ Represents 1 or more of the previous character ba+t matches bat, baat, etc. but not bt

pattern1|pattern2 Represents either of the patterns specified (or) ba|t matches ba or t but not bat (it will match ba and then t for two matches instead of one)

(pattern)one of the special characters Same as above, but treats the characters within the parenthesis as a group (ba)*t will match t, bat, babat, but not bt

Now lets put some of these in to examples we can use.

How can I filter any emails that have a blank subject line?

You would use: The 'Subject field' does not contain RegExpr, and then place a full stop . in the next box.

Remember, the full stop . means any character, so we are making a rule that subject line does not contain any character, meaning a blank subject line.

How can I filter out words in certain parts of sentences?

       ^buy matches 'buy' only if its at the beginning of a sentence

buy$ matches 'buy' only if its at the end of a line

^buy$ matches 'buy' if it's the only word in the line

More details of regular expressions can be found here. There are also other guides available on the web.

Q.        Can I import existing filters?
A.        Probably not. MailWasher has it’s filters in a text file in the application data directory (this can be located by selecting About in the Help menu and clicking on the link). But you will probably have to add your own filter in.
Q.        Why would I use different colors for my filters?
A.        These appear on the status column and are activated when an email is intercepted which has triggered your filter.
Q.        How does the 'precedence' feature work?
A.        People in the friends list would not normally be subject to filters. But if you have set up a filter to specifically catch a particular virus then you can set the filter to take precedence (or identify the virus) over anyone in your friends list.
Q.        How can I block foreign character sets?
A.        As an example: With Korean Spam you can filter for the character set. Have a look at the entire header and you will see 'charset=something' Just filter the entire header looking for that and it will work.

Miscellaneous

Q. It seems to me that spam increases over holiday periods.