MailWasher w/Avast

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi,
I use MailWasher to bounce spam. The problem is that with the amount of spam I get, Avast thinks my bounces are spam going out and I get Virus warnings up the kazoo!! One after another for each bounce over about 4 or 5. Is there a way to turn this warning off? Or up the number of emails that are required to be considered spam or something?

Thanks,
TJ

2

  1. Never bounce Spam - for the most part it is a waste of time, most from addresses are forged - even if it weren’t forged all you would be doing is confirming that they have a good email address that they can ad to other lists (more spam).

  2. I don’t have avast email protection check my mailwasher checks, I feel it is a waste of processing effort to check the small part that mailwasher uses to identify spam and then have the email protection check the email that I actually download.

You can edit the avast4.ini file ‘C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA’ check the [MailScanner] section and add the line you see below.

[MailScanner]
IgnoreProcess=MailWasher.exe

3

Thanks.

I thought the purpose of bouncing the spam was to simulate a bad email address notification and that simply deleting the spam would in effect confirm the address as good.

4

Skyflash
Welcome to the forum.
It’s actually the exact opposite. Once you bounce an email, they know it got to you and lot’s of spammers use this as a trigger: “We’ve got a live one.”
My suggestion is for you to uncheck the Enable bouncing of messages option in your MailWasher Account details for Pop3 accounts Settings.
Hope that helps.

5

HI :slight_smile:

Does that trick actually stop Avast from scanning mail when mailwasher checks for it?

I added the line for mailwasher to avast4.ini file like U said, but Avast is still scanning mail when mailwasher checks, if it any help i insterted the line just under the ignoreprocess=Avast Setup

TIA

BaNzI ;D

6

“under”?
I think it has to be in the same key, separated by comma - i.e. something like
IgnoreProcess=avast.setup,MailWasher.exe

7

Ahh cheers Igor :slight_smile:

I had done it the way described above by DavidR, so it looked like this under the MailScanner section

IgnoreProcess=avast.setup
IgnoreProcess=MailWasher.exe

Will try it the way U have said Igor, many thanks

BaNzI ;D

EDIT: The line now looks like this IgnoreProcess=avast.setup,MailWasher.exe

But Avast is still checking & showing the details stripe when Mailwasher checks :frowning:

Does it need a reboot to take affect or can same be achived by stopping the providers & restarting them?

8

Honestly, I don’t know… reboot would be a safe thing to do.

9

I wasn’t aware that you already had an IgnoreProcess entry (mine didn’t) so the addition of the ignoreprocess line would have been correct. As Igor says, you can have multiple processes ignored provided you separate them with a comma ‘,’

10

Cheers Igor, a reboot did the trick, mailwasher now checks without Avast scannin it :slight_smile:

@DavidR, there was only the avast setup in the ignore process section, i thought that was a default option?

Should be ok as i imagine it wouldnt need to scan the vps or prog updates using the web scanner

Cheers

BaNzI ;D

11

OK, so what you’re saying is that if I’m a spammer and I spam you but get a bounce back, then I should expend extra effort to further spam you. (Even though anyone with the sense of a goat would realize your smart enough to be using MailWasher or something and all I’m ever going to get from you is bounced emails.)

But, if I get nothing back then I should assume the address is bad even though email sent to bad addresses are bounced by the distant end server? Perhaps I have slyly set up my email server to accept emails sent to bad addresses and bounce only those sent to real adresses.

Is that what you’re saying?

12

I’m sure you know exactly what I’m saying but, if it makes you happy, keep bouncing your spam. ;D

13

I guess I’m just trying to see the logic in not bouncing.

14

Skyflash, they are just offering you other alternatives. You by all means should continue to bounce your e-mails if that’s what you are used to and have been doing. No one is saying that your in the wrong but what they are saying does in fact happen with these spammers. I personally ignore their stuff IF I get any and just delete it. I not knowingly have then received more of the same spam after doing that. :wink:

15

As I said previously for the most part it is a waste of time with forged from address, etc.

You have more or less said it your self, ‘spammers aren’t going to waste time’ and going through their lists removing bounced emails (assuming the bounced email ever reaches them) to clean up their list offers no financial benefit. So do you thing they will do that, no, I don’t think so either.

If everyone bounced spam, just think of the increased email traffic, not to mention you may get your bounced email back as undeliverable.

I would recommend adding another entry to the Origins of Spam section - sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org - this catches most of my spam and I just set it to flag for deletion when I process my mail - no extra effort or time required.

As you have found that when you bounce spam it is outgoing email which will be sent by your email client and will be scanned as normal (an overhead).

16

What is: Origins of Spam section - sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org ?

I have spamblocker turned on which helps some. And I have Mail Washer set to bounce my blacklist without me even seeing it. I only have to blacklist the new spam.

I can’t say as I’ve ever seen an undeliverable bounce message. I’ve just assumed email servers wouldn’t send an undeliverable message to a bounced address.

I know spammers wouldn’t manually clean up their list but if I were a spammer I would think my software would be smart enough to clean up the list for me. This wouldn’t be out of human kindness just sense. I would rather concentrate my spamming efforts and computing power on 20 Million good addresses than 40 million addresses where half of them bounce.

The thing that bugs me is that spam would stop completely if it didn’t work but there is apparently that 1 in a million dumb arse that falls for it. We need to kill that guy and then it will stop.

btw, I like your avitar. Are you a military jumper or was that historical? I’ve never riden a T-10 but my 1st jump was on a ParaCommander and my other round was a reserve ride.

Blue Skies

And why am I a llama?

17

All we are doing is giving advice, you option to take it or leave it, but people tire of giving it if it is rammed back down their throats.

You have Mail washer and you ask 'What is Origns of Spam section - Look in Spam Tools and add a new origin - the one I gave you, sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org.

My blacklist has one entry in it as it is a poor method of defeating spam, with forged from addresses they are a moving target and your blacklist just grows and grows making checking it to identify spam longer.