MailMaint

Release Notes

Windows XP and Vista Issues

 Windows XP and Vista allows multiple users to logon to the same PC at the same time, and to run the same programs.  This means that there may be two or more copies of MailMaint running at the same time, with their own settings but possibly with common log files.  While it is currently acceptable for multiple users on the same PC to share the same mail files (because they are not logged on at the same time), with Windows XP the files must be held in separate directories to avoid possible conflicts.  MailMaint 3.1 and later default the log directories to: 'Documents and Settings\(user)\Application Data\MailMaint'.

3.5

 

1 - Now supporting secure connections using SSL/TLS for POP3 and SMTP mail servers that support it, such as Goggle Mail.  There is a new drop down box next the server port for both POP3 and SMTP mail that defaults to 'Not Secured'.  Changing the box to 'SSL/TLS connection' will also change Port to 995 for POP3 and 465 for SMTP and will cause MailMaint to start an implicit TLS connection to this port, which will be refused if SSL/TLS is not available.  Google Mail uses 'SSL/TLS connection' for pop.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com.  Changing the box to 'SSL/TLS Authentication' will default the port to 110 or 25 and will cause MailMaint to start a normal POP3 or SMTP session, but it will check if the server returns a STARTTLS response to indicate it supports SSL/TLS at which point a secure connection is established instead, or the server is closed.  SSL/TLS has been tested with Google Mail, CIX and Merula.  Goggle supports 'SSL/TLS connection' for pop.gmail.com (port 995) and smtp.gmail.com (ports 465 or 587).  Merula supports 'SSL/TLS Authentication' for POP3 on galahad.merula.net and SMTP on post.merula.net. CIX supports 'SSL/TLS Authentication' for POP3 on mail.cix.co.uk. Note that Goggle Mail needs POP3 mail to be activated through the account control panel, and requires 'recent:' to be added before the account name in order to read all items in the mailbox.  Note that MailMaint does not currently attempt to verify the server's SSL certificate. 

2 - Added new authentication types for sending email, NTLM (for Exchange Server), Cram-Sha1, and Auto Select which uses the best authentication mode the SMTP server supports (if any). 

3 - In Preferences, the names of up to three extra custom header fields may now be specified to be stored and displayed.  There is a new mini grid in which three header names may be specified, ie 'X-Spam-Level:', which are case insensitive but must have the trailing colon, then the column title that should appear in the main window.  Once the custom headers have been selected, take 'Select Header to View' from the 'Settings' menu, and select them for viewing, re-ordering if needed.  Note custom headers will only be saved for newly downloaded email, also that DUN Manager 3.5 or later is needed to stop these custom headers being lost if the same mailbox is shared between the two applications. 

4 - The main mail headers list now uses various background colours to indicate the status of each mail, selectable in Preferences.  The default colours are pale yellow for old mail headers previously downloaded, pale green for new mail headers, light mauve for new mail detected as spam by the filters and selected for deletion, white for mail matching the white list, and pale red when an item is manually selected for deletion.  If the colours are changed, the Default button resets all colours to their initial defaults. 

5 - Sorting the main headers list has been improved.  Most columns are now secondary sorted on Item Number so identical matches on the primary sort are no longer randomised.  The X-To and X-From header columns are now sorted on reversed email addresses, so top level domain first, then domain and mailbox name.  Note some old X-To headers may include multiple email addresses and friendly name, and will sort badly, new headers are cleaned-up.  The item number is now in a separate column to the delete box.  Clicking the header in the delete column now sorts headers according to whether they are selected for deletion.  This change means personalised column selections are lost during the upgrade and will need to be reselected, likewise some window repositions and sizing.  

6 - The Settings menu has a new Debug Window option that immediately enables debug (previously set only in Preferences) and displays the Debug Window.  The number of lines displayed in the Debug Window is no longer limited, except by PC memory.  Beware that enabling debug when accessing mailboxes with more than a few hundred messages is not recommended.  Note that updating the debug windows considerably slows down operations, particular with Debug: All enabled.  

7 - Fixed a nasty memory leak that meant old header information was not correctly cleared as new headers were read, causing reading of headers to slow down as more and more were read.  This issue could also have meant that email was incorrectly selected for deletion as spam, based on prior read mail. 

8 - Fixed various bugs that meant the POP3 mailbox could be left open in certain error situations, needing MailMaint to be restarted before access was available again. 

9 - Improved the parsing of badly formatted dates, usually in spam emails.  The debug window will now report dates that fail parsing. 

10 - When specifying file directories in Preferences and Servers, a new directory name can now be specified.  The Mail Headers and Mail Save Directories are now defaulted to a subdirectory MailMaint in the user’s application directory. They may no longer be left blank.  The Headers directory is now validated and an error dialog displayed if the directory does not exist. 

11 - Improved the Address Book window to make it harder to overwrite an existing address, and to ensure the default MailMaint email address is saved.  Note the address book is now saved in a different place in the registry to ease future changes, and will be empty after installing this release. 

12 - MailMaint is now digitally signed, to reduce the level of warnings when using it on Windows Vista. 

13 - When closing a mailbox with messages to delete, if you cancel from the confirm delete dialog, it is again possible to select or deselect messages for deletion. 

14 - The Attachments window is now more likely to show a file name for image attachments in an email. The window is now larger when initially opened. 
3.3 1 - Spam email (UCE) has become a major problem for users that widely publicise their email addresses, Magenta Systems has been receiving over 300 spams per hour on really bad days (up to 15 megs per day). The majority of this spam is being sent to hundreds of fictitious email accounts the spammers have invented, such as kwak@magsys.co.uk, and many mail servers just accept all such mail for the domain. Then there are just the usual offers of drugs, watches, and adult sites.

This release of MailMaint adds filters to help detect spam and cause it to be automatically deleted by ticking the Delete? box. Detection will only be as good as the filters you specify, but anything is better than checking headers one by one manually. Some ISPs have spam detection facilities and add a special header to mail believed to be spam, and this is easy to check and cause auto deletion. Spam detection is implemented by three filter lists, 'Valid Email Accounts' are set for each separate POP3 server, while a new Spam Filters window has 'Spam Detection Filters' and 'Spam White List' which are common to all POP3 servers (if enabled). In the filter lists, the valid headers that may be checked are:

To:
From:
CC:
Subject:
XTo:
XFrom:
Body: (means headers and body)
Header: (only headers)

The 'Valid Mail Accounts' list should include all the email legitimate addresses expected in the POP3 mailbox, these may be partial or full names, ie 'XTo: dunman@magsys.co.uk' or just 'XTo: magsys'. It is generally better to check the X-To header address (which may be extracted from the Received header) since this is the 'real' address used to deliver the email (To: is often faked). This checking is only effective if 'Delete Mail to Invalid Accounts' is ticked. It may be overridden by filters in the 'Spam White List', see below. Note that if Body: is used to check for text someone in the body of the message, the first 100 lines of the message will always be downloaded and base64 MIME text decoded, so it's perhaps best to avoid body filtering if using a slow internet connection.

The 'Spam Detection Filters' are used to detect spam by looking for known signatures in the email. Our ISP already detects most spam and adds a special header to such email, similar to the following: 'X-DNSBL-Warning: Possible Spam Message - checked via relays.osirusoft.com (217.10.197.2/127.0.0.9)', so the filter 'Header: x-dnsbl-warning' will detect such email. Two UK ISPs that have such spam detection are Merula (http://www.merula.net/) and Clara (http://www.clara.net/). A list of filters we use is listed below. Note some may be specific to UK spam, the 'charset=ks' type filters are to detect Korean spam, while '<img' and '<script language' will detect any HTML email with images and or client side scripts (which can be nasty), but if you expect such email don't use these filters. Please note filtering of this sort can not be exhaustive in detecting all spam, unless very large lists are used updated many times a day (which is how Brightmail spam detection works at some ISPs). The 'Spam White List' allows false filter detections to be overridden, so the email is not treated as spam. So 'Subject: order' would ensure that any potential orders are delivered.

Once spam has been detected, the Delete? tick box will be set so the email is deleted when the mailbox is closed. If spam has been falsely detected, the box may be unticked. Note that spam checking is only effective when new headers are read from the POP3 server, headers previously downloaded are not checked again.

Common spam detection filters:

Header: x-dnsbl-warning
Header: jixing mailer
From: marinedigital.com
From: iagentnetwork
From: clubber eflyer
From: kenvarga.com
From: clubbergroup.com
From: musicmailer.co.uk
Subject: viagra
Subject: adult
Subject: ukclubbin.com
Subject: adv:
Subject: friend...
Subject: cash
Subject: lottery
Subject: casino
Subject: smokers
Subject: virgin teens
Body: hotamateurgirls
Body: ks_c_5601
Body: charset=euc-kr
Body: charset=ks_c
Body: charset="ks_c
Body: free euro
Body: free investment
Body: supersite.com
Body: btamail.net.cn
Body: ussent.com
Body: spokeyourmind.com
Body: optout
Body: opt-out
Body: penis
Body: porn pics
Body: bluecluegalaxy
Body: /remove.htm
Body: bessdeals.co.uk
Body: <img
Body: <script language

The Magenta Systems DUN Manager application uses identical filtering techniques for spam detection, but runs as a regular 'Check Mail' task automatically deleting spam from the mail server (every 10 minutes in our case). DUN Manager will also create bounce messages.

2 - The Define Mail Servers window has changed to accommodate new spam settings, the list of servers has been removed so the POP3 mailbox to be edited needs to be selected from the button bar first. There are now separate menu options to edit a POP3 mailbox and create a new one.

3 - MailMaint now supports mailboxes with more than 9,999 items.

4 - Changed the way dates are handled internally to avoid a problem on PCs where dates are displayed in non-standard formats. If DUN Manager is used on the same PC as MailMaint to access the same mailboxes, a beta or release dated 12th August 2004 or later should also be used.

5 - The Escape key no longer closes the main MailMaint window.

6 - Email addresses without @ are now supporting for sending email.

7 - A counter now shows emails being deleted as the mailbox is closed, which can take a while since this is done one at a time.

8 - When downloading POP3 email, message headers containing encoded text (starting with =?) are now decoded into simple text. This may improve detection of spam by keywords.

9 - When clicking 'Open Mailbox', the button is immediately disabled to prevent it being clicked a second time, in previous versions a few things happened before it was disabled which on a very slow system may have taken a couple of seconds.

10 - The debug window now opens when sending mail, and will no longer cause an error if it overflows.

11 - There are minor fixes for MIME decoding.

12 - When sending mail, a confirmation dialog is now displayed when cancelling or closing the window without sending the message first.

13 - The short cuts on the main window buttons have been removed since these duplicate short cuts on the drop down menus. They were also unexpectedly effective while viewing HTML mail, so clicking a C closed the mailbox.

14 - All the drop down shortcuts are now CTL-ALT something, rather than just CTL, since these conflicted with common editing short cuts like CTL-X to cut while sending mail which instead exited MailMaint. Sorry, must have been mad to add them in the first place.

15 - Mail sent with a year earlier than 1900 no longer stops headers being downloaded.
 
3.2

 

 1 - Added support for SMTP authentication, allowing logon to mail servers to send mail. Some SMPT servers support authentication to allow use from different ISPs or networks. There are several different means of authentication, MailMaint supports Plain, Login and Cram-MD5, with Login seeming to be the most common. You can check which methods are supported by your SMPT server by setting authentication to one of these options, enabling Debug (All) and attempting to send email. Look in the debug window for the line starting '< 250-AUTH=', which should be followed by a list of allowed methods. SMTP authentication can be set-up in Preferences for all mail servers, or in Servers for specific servers, in both cases needing a logon name and password.

2 - Now allowing selection of which mail headers are shown in the main list, and in which order. From Settings, click 'Select Header to View', a list of the possible headers that may be displayed with those currently selected ticked. The order may be changed by selecting a header title and clicking the up or down arrow. New headers that may be displayed are X-Envelope-To and X-Envelope-From which are added by some POP3 servers and may be more reliable than the normal To and From, CC (carbon copy), File Name and Sequential Nr (only if DUN Manager saved mail bodies).

3 - The To header field is no longer replaced by X-Envelope-To is certain circumstances, since the latter can now been seen in a separate column.

4 - Fixed a problem that prevented the top message being relayed, unless it had been previously viewed.

5 - Fixed a problem with the 'Confirm Delete Messages' prompt when closing the mailbox, where only Cancel did this and No was treated as Yes and deleted selected messages.

6 - The Preferences window now shows some registration details, to confirm that the USERREG.TXT file has been found and read correctly. Fixed a problem where a partial account name was not being allowed in some circumstances.

7 - Re-arranged the status bar captions, to avoid long error messages being truncated.

8 - Due to a problem with the mail headers list on Windows XP, the manifest file has been removed so that MailMaint does not use the latest 'common controls'.

9 - Fixed a problem that caused the button panel to disappear when the main window was maximised and then normalised. Ensured that some windows are fixed size and no longer resizable.

Note - there is a problem fixed in DUN Manager Release 2.7, relating to saving X-Envelope-To, X-Envelope-From and CC headers which are corrupted in earlier versions. This only effects use of the DUN Manager Check to Mail and Relay Mail scheduled tasks when header files are shared with MailMaint.
3.1
 1 - Removed the beta expiry that caused MailMaint 3.0 to stop today. Apologies for this oversight.

2- Fixed a problem when adding a new server or renaming an old server, so that the new name becomes the new current server and is correctly selected in the server list.

3 - Fixed a problem that caused some menu settings to be lost when choosing a new mail server. If the main window had been resized or moved this problem also caused it to jump back to it’s original size and position.

4 - When viewing mail headers, the space bar may again be used to select and deselect items for deletion.

5 - In the Send Mail window, the Cancel button has been renamed Close to accurately reflect it’s purpose. It’s not possible to cancel an email while it’s being sent. It’s no longer possible to send or relay mail unless an SMTP server has been specified.

6 - The mail directories now default for specific users rather than being in the program directory: 'Documents and Settings\(user)\Application Data\MailMaint'. This is important for Windows XP where more than one user may be logged onto the same PC as the same time, allowing multiple copies of MailMaint to be used.

7 - Made a minor change to the registration system to correct a problem recognising certain license keys.

8 - Added the ability to request a new license key for an existing user, if the original key is lost or mail accounts are changed. From the Help menu, take ‘Order Online or New License Key’ while online to the internet, an Internet Explorer window will appear with the MailMaint secure order form, with the old order number and email account logon defaulted to those in MailMaint.

3.0
 1 - MailMaint is now shareware. Until registered, it is only possible to access two POP3 servers, and it's not possible to send or reply to email. The unregistered copy still allows mail to be viewed and deleted, similarly to earlier releases. To register MailMaint, please use the web form at https://secure.magsys.co.uk/secure/mailjoin.asp or click Order Online from the Help menu. It is necessary to enter the user name for one POP3 server account on the order form, and this account must exist in MailMaint for the license key to be accepted. The license key will be returned as a small file that is simply copied into the MailMaint directory. When MailMaint starts, it checks for the file and a valid account user name, and if one or other is not found displays the text 'unregistered'.

2 - Redesigned the main window, removing several buttons and adding menu options instead, including a new DUN Hang-Up menu option. Hot keys now work for most mailbox functions, CTL-M in particular to close HTML mail view (where double click does not work). The main menu shows the various hot keys.

3 - Improved message display with four Mail Display Options for Raw, Simple, Decoded and HTML, these are selected from the Settings, Display Format menu. Raw shows the complete headers and message. Simple shows only important headers and full message. Decoded shows any mail attachments and displays the first plain or rich text part, or raw if neither is found. HTML shows the first html formatted part in an internal browser window, or plain or rich text if no html part is found. Web URL links are fully functional in all display modes (unless disabled), but the right click menu must be used to go back, there are no navigation buttons or tool bars. If the message display format is changed (ie from raw to HTML) while viewing a message, the display is immediately updated. The Settings menu also includes 'Remote HTML Links' and 'Remote HTML Images'. Unless the former is ticked, clicking on a link to a web site displays an error. Unless the latter is ticked, HTML mail is shown without an external images and without any scripting (that may be remote links or windows automatically). Accessing such images on the internet will provide information to the mail sender that you have read their email, which is not usually desirable.

4 - Added an Attachment window, showing the parts that comprise the email, and the content type of each, allowing specific parts to be viewed or saved. Double clicking on a 'text' part causes immediate view. This window is not available if Show Raw display is selected.

5 - Added Send Mail, Reply to Email, Mail Relay, Address Book and support for Mailto: links. When sending mail, a new window appears allowing a message to be composed and sent. Multiple send to addresses may be specified, one per line, but each message will be sent separately with specific headers. A tick box allows a copy of the message to be sent to the sender. Define Mail Servers now includes SMTP Server properties to support sending mail. While viewing a mailbox, selecting one or more items, and taking 'Relay Message(s)' from the Messages menu will display a further dialog requesting an email address, and will then relay the emails to that address. Relay means the mail is sent unchanged, with it's original headers and, more importantly, no MIME corruption.

6 - Added a new Preferences window with various new features. The default SMTP server will be used if there is no SMTP address specified for a POP3 server. This combination should allow use on both dial-up and permanent connections. 'Ignore Headers Older Than (days)', which will cause headers to stop downloading when the first mail item more than X days old is read. This will only work with POP3 servers that keep mail in chronological order, and where mail items have sensible dates. 'Skip Confirm Message Deletion' allows deletion of old mail when the mailbox is closed without needing a second confirmation. The directory in which mail headers will be saved may be specified. If left blank, headers are stored in the program directory, as previous releases. A directory for saving mail attachments may also be specified.

7 - Added Proxy server support. If enabled in Preferences and for a specific Mail Server, the named proxy server will be contacted and the logon adjusted to pass the server name in the format userid#server, where the # delimiter can be specified. This has been tested with Wingate.

8 - Changed the way the main header list is built, so it is far more responsive on large mailboxes. The 'Faster Update' option has been removed since this change obsoletes it. Sorting is improved, click on any header once or twice for forward or reverse sort. Added a new State column to header list, showing whether a message has been read, relayed or deleted. When deleted (after the mailbox is closed), the headers are cleared. More effort is made to identify relevant headers, X-Envelope-To and X-Envelope-From will be used if available since these are often more reliable than the normal headers (particularly for spam). Dates missing the day of the week are now correctly handled.

9 - There is now some commonality between MailMaint and DUN Manager Release 2.5 and later. DUN Manager has two scheduled mail tasks, 'Check for Mail' and 'Relay Mail', and these can use the same local files as MailMaint so that headers will only be downloaded once for both applications. The first time a mailbox is accessed from this release, the saved header file will be renamed from 'mailxxx.hdr' to 'userid@host.hdr' where userid and host are the mailbox details. In Define Mail Servers, the Mail Directory may be specified separately for each server, as in DUN Manager. There is one minor incompatibility relating to archiving mail in DUN Manager which is fixed in betas of 2.6 dated later than 4th September.

10 - It is now possible to view mail offline, but only if it has been archived by one of the DUN Manager scheduled mail tasks. For this to work, the mail directory must be common to DUN Manager (see above) and the scheduled task POP3 settings must be set to archive mail. 'Open Mail Archive' will appear on the Mailbox menu if archived mail is found, and taking the option will display archived mail headers, allowing any mail to be viewed. Currently there is no archive deletion, but this will be added in a subsequent release. Nor will MailMaint itself archive email, only DUN Manager.

11 - Added new functionality to allow MailMaint to be run from a floppy disk, with all server settings and preferences saved on the floppy. This will be useful for people that travel a lot and need to access POP3 mail in a better manner than a web interface. There are two new command line arguments to MailMaint. The argument -inifiles specifies that all settings should be taken from two ini files, mmgen.ini for preferences and window cosmetics, mmserv.ini for mail servers. If -inifiles is specified, it may be optionally followed by a space and a second argument which is the drive and directory in which to look for the INI files, ie A: for a standard floppy. If this argument is not used, the INI file are created in the program directory. Note these new arguments can be used to avoid saving details in the registry, which may be easier for backup or copying server information in particular to other PCs. If used from a floppy, just copy MAILMAINT.EXE to the floppy and create a short cut with the arguments above.

12 - The mail server password may now be left blank, and will be prompted each time the mailbox is opened.

13 - If the mailbox logon details are invalid, the mailbox is now closed correctly.

14 - Stopping headers no longer closes the mailbox.

15 - MailMaint now sends keep alive commands while mailbox headers or messages are being viewed, and perhaps large numbers of messages selected for deletion, to prevent the POP3 server closing the mailbox.

16 - Multiple mail items may now be selected for deletion, select the items then right click and Set Delete Selected. The right click menu also includes Set Delete All and Set Clear All.

17 - If server account details are changed (server or user name), any previously saved email headers are now deleted.

18 - Illegal email without a date is now handled by MailMaint. Today's date is used instead. Dates with non-standard years 00, 01, etc, are now treated as 2000, 2001, etc, rather than 1900.

19 - MailMaint no longer displays errors if RAS is not installed or if there are no dial-up connection entries created.
2.3
 1. A problem introduced in 2.2 where headers were not saved has been fixed.

2 . When getting headers, MailMaint no longer gets the first line of the message as well. This is a workaround to a problem relating to the QPopper UNIX mail server (and maybe others) that get confused when a message contains lines over about 2,000 characters long without any line endings. Such lines are against the SMTP RFC, but spammers don't care. This problem could still appear if the maximum number of lines to retrieve is non-zero and the last line is very long, but provided you set 10 lines or higher it's very unlikely.

3. Some other minor cosmetics have been fixed, so an error description is now displayed, and a message while waiting for the mailbox to close when exiting.

4 Due to the method used to save encoded passwords, some got truncated in length. This has now been fixed.

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