MailScout
Reviewed by Mathew Thompson
Mailscout - Anti Spam and On-line email interrogation for RISC OS .
How many times have you downloaded your emails only to find that its full of rubbish which you instantly delete? i know i have, if you use online email such as lycos or hotmail this isn't quite such a problem as you can just ignore it but, if like me you download it all in one go, and then look at it offline, you can't get rid of it, but now you can.
Image software have released Mailscout which is a simple but effective spamblock program which is the answer to every spam haters prayers!
Installing Mailscout is the usual drag onto the relevant place on the hard disk and then let it copy it across and thats it - simple.
Before you can use Mailscout you have to configure it, all you do is load the program and then from the icon on the icon bar click on "Choices" and then you will see the "Configuration" window as shown below.
Now you need to enter your details, so enter your Mail Server, User ID, Password and which protocol you are using, the configuration screenshot shows it set up for an Argonet account. By using the "Settings" option you can switch to other email accounts that you have set up and bin the spam from them as well, if you have just the one, then leave it on default, once done, click on save and all being well it should work ok.
One last bit of configuration and this is the important bit you MUST turn off the fetch option on your internet software (eg !Dialup) otherwise you won't be able to examine it before download to do this with !Dialup from the iconbar menu go to Choices>General and then on the "mail/News Transfer" untick fetch/sendmail on connection.
Now we're ready to go.
Connect to the internet and when you are connected, click on the Mailscout icon on the iconbar and you should see the following window.
After a while this window should appear and then you can begin the email interrogations!
This shows two bits of spam received which are highlighted for deletion
If you want the email, you leave it alone, if not you click on the icon at the end of the email line and give it a tick, it will be highlighted in red now, if you want to add it to the filter click on the "from" with the mouse, you can add "to" and "subject" to the filter (more on that in a bit), when you ready then click on delete to bin the selected emails, once you click on delete thats it - they're gone for ever!
When you have decided what emails you want, then click on download email from your internet program and the emails you want not all the rubbish will then get downloaded to your mailbox then come offline and sit back and read your mail!
The Mailscout filter is a useful feature of the program, to access them, click menu on the Mailscout icon and select "Show Filters" and window with three textfiles "from" "subject" and "to" should appear if you click on the texfiles you will see any of the email addresses and subjects that you selected to add to the filters, if you get any more emails from the same address or with the same subject then they will be displayed automatically in red but are not deleted until you specify it, so if you remove the tick you can keep the email if you wish to.
You can then email all your filtered email addresses to Image Software to create a global filter so all known spam addresses are instantly highlighted for deletion, this list will never be complete as they spammers change email addresses frequently, but it is a very useful feature.
Thats basically all there is to Mailscout its a simple but effective little program which does a job that was needed to be done, I absolutely recommend it to anyone who gets spam and gets annoyed with it (that must be everyone) since I bought Mailscout there have been 2 upgrades and there is more to come including the possibilities of being able to read your emails online and check if it is spam or not if unsure some of them are sneaky, also the possibility of being able to drag spam out and dump it into Junkmail to fire off complaints, other features are being looked at so the future looks good for this product, the after sales support and help services from Image Software is superb very quick and very helpful.
This review is based on the internet setup of !DialUp with !MessengerPRO with an Argonet ISP, for other set ups contact Image Software, but the most recent upgrade includes a patch to use it with Voyager as well.
Product details
| Product: | MailScout |
| Supplier: | Image Software |
| Price: | £25.00 |
| Address: | 48 Hinchliffe Road Hamworthy Poole Dorset BH15 4ED. |
| Tel: | 01202 269720 |
| WWW: | www.imagesoft.co.uk |
| E-mail: | sales@imagesoft.co.uk |
Mathew Thompson