MailWasher Pro process
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[edit] What MailWasher Pro logs
As it reads and processes mail, MailWasher Pro records important information into logs. The seenemail.txt log file records the message IDs of email that you have viewed. This logged file is used to decide which lines to color or make bold as specified in the options for display.
The tmpLog.txt file lasts for the duration of a session, and records the program's activity. When you close the program, this temporary file is appended to the spamLog.txt file to allow analysis of program activity over a longer period.
MailWasher Pro allows you to see statistical reports on previous messages, filter effectiveness, breakdowns for junk mail and legitimate mail, and a history of mail volumes. This statistical information is logged into the mwSummary.txt file.
[edit] How MailWasher Pro allows you to restore deleted mail
When MailWasher Pro version 5 processes an account's mailbox, it records any deleted mail into an encoded holding file called Trash.rot135. This file is sometimes referred to as the recycle bin. It also stores mail and statistical information into a daily log file called mwLog.yyyymmdd where yyyymmdd is the date of the log. These files are used to display the message log so that users can restore any deleted mail. You set the number of days that the daily log files are retained in the Options / Summary page.
[edit] How MailWasher Pro learns what is spam and what is legitimate
When users elect to use the learning tool, MailWasher Pro stores mail designated as legitimate into an archive file called Training archive - legitimate.rot135 and stores mail designated as spam into an archive file called Training archive - junk.rot135. The choice is made from hints given by a user-defined blacklist, friends list, filters and from user selections in the primary MailWasher screen in the learning column. (The blacklist and friends list are combined into one file, called blacklist.txt.)
Periodically MW Pro scans these two archives to extract commonly occurring key words that are good indicators of legitimate mail or spam mail, and builds a keyword file called TrainingMA.dat
[edit] How MailWasher Pro filtering works
MailWasher Pro will use these keywords when reading further incoming mail to determine whether the mail is possibly legitimate, or possibly spam.
When MailWasher Pro checks an account's mailbox, it performs a number of tests for each message. These tests are arranged in a precedence over a number of tools. The tools include a check against
- the Friends list,
- the FirstAlert! database,
- the blacklist,
- user defined filters,
- the learning tool,
- the "origins of spam" list of known spam IP addresses.
Since there are a number of tools, there may be a number of results for any message, indicating whether it is spam or legitimate. The action taken for any message is generally the action specified for the highest priority tool. These actions include
- mark for deletion
- mark as legitimate
- delete without warning
- add to blacklist
- add to friends list
- display or hide the email
