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MiserMail Spam Removal

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MiserMail is unique because the email program is built around the spam
filter in a completely integrated way, as opposed to adding simplistic
"message rules" to an existing email program or filters operating
independently of the email client. Additionally, the spam filter is
the main feature and development focus. Though spam filtering is
integrated with email features, it is seamless and hidden from the
user.

Most effective spam removal

This provides the most effective spam filtering possible because the
filter can be aware of every last detail of your correspondence in
real-time, and the little details make all the difference.
Additionally, a complete variety of different types of filters are
employed so that the chance of a spammer overcoming them all is close
to a statistical zero. Thus MiserMail spam removal rates will be as
much as 20-40 times those of stand-alone filters.

Most convenient

After a period of "tweaking" the filter, spam removal is effortless
and completely transparent. No web navigation, delays, proxies
competing with your email program to collect mail, spam forwarding,
passwords, 3rd parties, giving others access to your email, extra
software layers interfering with other programs, spam reporting, etc.
Just conduct your email correspondence as usual. The spam will simply
be missing.

Recommended only for certain types of users

Besides the filter and email program being perfectly integrated to
filter spam, we achieve our high numbers because the filter is
tailored to those for whom spam removal is most successful due to the
types of correspondence they conduct.

Misermail is generally recommended for small offices and typical home
users. Click the "What you don't get" button on the MiserMail main
page for a list of recommended user profiles. Some additional
information is at the bottom of this page.

Filter features

MiserMail uses all standard filters that do not require extra effort
of end-users, plus a few we have developed that are not prudent to
publish. This includes intelligently analyzing messages using advanced
statistics, heuristics, bayesian, pattern matching, spammer profiling,
and other techniques for advertising style, formatting, header
characteristics, disguised content, lots of other spam
characteristics, and content especially including pornography. Several
filters can even identify short, disguised plain-text spam, and
several can identify spam absolutely.

Other filter elements let you tailor the filter to the type of
correspondence you conduct, including phrase, word, phone, and
auxiliary email lists used to bypass the filter or absolutely identify
spam, including "Dead on arrival" (logged only) and override lists
(which let you exclude certain messages like newsletters while
receiving others messages from the same sender).

Home users who regularly "Opt-in" for spam they want to receive, or
who regularly join new email lists, may be disappointed that they need
to read Help to learn an extra procedure when first signing up for
these services, or simply check the spam list until the first message
comes in.

Spam reply

All spam removal systems allow the possibility of legitimate messages
being misidentified as spam. With MiserMail, this is reduced to a
negligible risk for recommended profiles and applies only to
first-contact messages from completely new senders. MiserMail can
identify most spam absolutely, so that the remaining spam that could
be misidentified is reduced to a small percentage of all spam.
Misermail will notify you once in a while that it has received a
"questionable" spam and provide a most convenient way to make the
identification yourself.

Alternatively, you can set MiserMail to send automatic recontact
requests which will recover misidentified messages. These "spam
replies" will also be rare since MiserMail can identify most spam
absolutely. You can select among various default replies or compose
your own.

Assuming aggresive filter settings, MiserMail will filter and send an
automatic recontact request for the first legitimate message in
all-HTML (aka "Rich text") from a new sender. These
ordinarily originate only from free email services, and then only from
beginners who would send and all-HTML message that looks like
spam as a first-contact to a stranger (exactly what spammers do). But
the recontact requests are simple, easy, and work especially well to
recover these types of messages.

Virus protection

MiserMail will not run any received executable code regardless of
settings, also a result of integrating the email program and spam
filter. This alone is a good reason to use MiserMail regardless of
spam removal. MiserMail identifies nearly all viruses as received and
encourages you to delete them, including all file extenders at OE
level 1 and a few we added ourselves. Java code is disabled.

HTML copies of plain-text messages and other suspicious content are
automatically converted into special file attachments - no more
garbage at the end of your messages. But if you know the sender or
feel like taking risks, you can view HTML copies with a selection to
use your default browser (big warnings are given). But if the special
attachments contain executable content you cannot access them from
MiserMail.

Three levels of virus security are provided for those users who might
ignore warnings, e.g. small children playing with the computer.

Give me some numbers!

Spam removal statistics will vary upon the type of first-contact
correspondence you typically receive. Future correspondence is not
filtered in any case because the sender's address will be in your sent
or received messages, address book, or auxiliary "Ok" sender list.

At Micromiser, in the last 1,000 "real-time" messages, about evenly
split between legitimate messages and spam, every spam message was
removed. One legitimate message was misidentified, but well-handled
with a recontact request so that it was received without needing to
check the spam list. The recontact request rate was about 5% of all
spam. (All Micromiser spam-removal statistics on this site are as of
the release date, 8/1/02, and are expected to continually improve.)

Our statistics are about the best that can be achieved because most
first-contacts come from our web-site contact form and most of the
rest are business-like, though we receive our share of personal email
of all varieties. Other recommended profiles should range between 99%
- 99.9% spam removal with reasonably aggressive settings either by
periodically checking the spam list or with an acceptable level of
recontact success if you decide not to check the spam list.

The above figures assume that you live in the US or Canada. Results in
other English-speaking places should be nearly as good, but we haven't
had a chance to test them. They also assume that if you don't achieve
these results after your own filter tweaking, you ask for help from
Micromiser. It's free by email, and on Fridays it's free over the
phone as well.

You will not achieve these statistics if you get an unusual number of
legitimate first-contact email from unknown senders that have
characteristics of spam, i.e. containing advertising, pornography,
advanced HTML, clickable web-links, etc., but you can tweak the filter
less aggressively to pass those messages and accept correspondingly
poorer spam removal statistics.

Spam filter development is an ongoing process as spammers adjust to
new filter techniques. If you haven't updated MiserMail for a while
and a spam gets thru, it's time to download and rerun the MiserMail
install file (free).

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