PureMail 1.0 ------------ Introduction: ------------- There are presently two technologies that attempt to defeat junk email. One uses a vast database of known junk emailers. The disadvantage to this is that new junk emailers surface every day, and the database requires an unreasonable amount of maintenance and disk space just to match PureMail. Another technique uses heuristics to determine if the email is junk by following user-defined rules to inspect the email - e.g. searching for phrases that try to sell a particular product, etc. Heuristics do not work well against all junk emailers because they can easily change the grammar in the email or forge the headers - and the program will let the email through. This technique also requires training the program to recognize phrases, thus requiring user intervention. Both techniques have a hit-and-miss approach to defeating junk email, and they lack user authentication. PureMail is transparent, and guarantees legitimate email from legitimate users. PureMail works on the principle that a user will only receive email from the sources that the user wants to receive from. For this to happen, the user must give to potential recipients something unique - the PureMail stamp - that identifies the user. This alone defeats present junk emailers because they cannot extract the unique PureMail stamp. Future technology can extract the stamp, but the timestamp within it stops expired email. Users can give the stamp to recipients in a number of ways: On an email- to-email basis, on a web page, or even on a business card. Every outgoing email has a unique key to prevent forgeries, but the stamp can be configured to be the same for every outgoing email - a weaker setting, but still strong enough. PureMail is the name for a technique I created to authenticate users over the Internet, and as a result, defeat junk or unwanted email. PureMail consists of a unique stamp that the sender generates, and adds to their outgoing email. The receiver must include the stamp when responding to the email. A recipient with PureMail will then search for the stamp in its database to make sure that the stamp is valid, and has not expired. Thus, we know if the email is legitimate or not, and there are no exceptions. PureMail has a number of settings, defining the strength of the algorithm. At its normal setting, it is guaranteed to work against all junk email technology. Hypothetically speaking, even a future junk emailer with PureMail capabilities has to send 30 million emails on average to a single PureMail- equipped client, just for one email to get through. However, this is not even possible because of PureMail's extra feature - a timestamp. If the timestamp has expired, the email is useless even if the rest of the stamp is legitimate. The algorithm is robust enough that it can be deployed on an enterprise setting. Other features are that it does not use encryption, making it possible to export outside North America. Also, the user does not have to train PureMail to recognize unwanted email. Most important, the user does not have to discard their favourite email program. PureMail sits quietly, querying the mail server for unauthorized email at specified intervals. Copyright: ---------- This program was created by Louie Orbeta from Winnipeg MB, Canada. No one else is responsible for this - the algorithm, the program, and the user interface. I alone created the PureMail stamp - which consists of the unique string of alphanumeric characters called the KEY, and the cutoff date/time called the TIMESTAMP. Version: -------- The latest version of PureMail can be downloaded from: http://travel.to/louieorbeta OR http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/2098 System requirements: -------------------- 1) Microsoft Windows 95 (Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 not tested) 2) A dial-up TCP/IP connection 3) A POP-based email account. You may have to ask your Internet Provider just to verify you have this. Features: --------- 1) Intuitive, easy-to-understand User Interface. 2) Written in Delphi, so the code generated is efficient and uses less RAM compared to Visual Basic. 3) Uses only 3% of Window's system resources in actual operation, and less than 1% if the program is sitting idle. 4) User can still use their favourite email client. PureMail is not a substitute - rather it is an addon to your exising email client. 5) Trusted Senders, Mailing Lists and Authorized Stamps List is limited only by the amount of RAM in the system. 6) Transparent operation - once PureMail has been started, it reads in its configuration and the trusted lists. It minimizes to the tooltray after. The only user intervention required is when a user needs to change configuration, or add a trusted sender/mailing list or a stamp. No need to close the program if the user logs out from their ISP. 7) User can generate a PureMail Stamp with an expiry date for use as a signature file for any email client. 8) Year-2000 compliant. Installation: ------------- There are no special installation requirements, extract the zip file to a directory where you want to install PureMail. Once installed, you can start the PureMail application by selecting PureMail.exe. The program will then minimize to the tooltray, and start to autofilter - that is, query your mail server for email headers, and start to weed out unwanted email. First-time configuration: ------------------------- If you're running this program for the first time, right-click the PureMail icon in the tooltray to restore it to full-screen. You have to set up your user information, so select Tools, and then User Information. Key in your login userid (lorbeta, for example), your password (which will be blanked out by '*' characters), and your POP-based mail server. Select the desired timer settings to which PureMail will query the mail server once it is set to autofilter. Clicking OK will save the configuration to userinfo.cfg. After configuring your user information, select Tools again, and then Stamp Configuration. Here, you will have to select the size of the PureMail stamp (between 5 to 8 characters), and the expiry date of the stamp (from tomorrow to a year from now). Select which directory AND file where you want to save the PureMail stamp. If the file does not exist, it will be created. Later on, if you decide to print the current Stamp, it will save it to the user-selected directory and file. Any email client can then append this file as a signature file. The default settings are already on-screen, so by clicking OK, the settings are saved to stmpinfo.cfg. Filter configuration: --------------------- Just letting you know, a lot of the menu functionality is mirrored by right-clicking anywhere in the user interface, so that you don't have to access the main menu. Before even dialing to your ISP, you have the option to generate some PureMail stamps. You can do this by pressing the Generate Stamp button in the user interface. The number of characters present and the expiry date were configured in the Stamp Configuration menu. You can also create your own stamps - and the expiry date is optional. If you want to add your own expiry date, the format should be mm/dd/yyyy. Last, save the entries to file (they will be saved in stamp.lst). Entries in this field are used to compare the contents of the "SUBJECT:" header. Comparison is CASE-SENSITIVE. If ANYTHING ELSE in the SUBJECT header appears other than the authorized stamp, the mail is discarded. You have the option to add trusted senders. You can enter email addresses, first names or last names, etc. Save any modifications to file (which is sender.lst). Entries in this field are used to compare the contents of the "FROM:" header. Comparison is case-insensitive. As long as the trusted sender appears in the FROM header, the mail is kept. You can also add trusted mailing lists. Here you can enter email addresses, etc.. just like adding trusted senders. Save any modifications to file (the file is maillist.lst). Entries in this field are used to compare the contents of the "TO:" and "CC:" headers. Comparison is case-insensitive. As long as the trusted mailing list appears in the TO or CC header, the mail is kept. If the mail isn't in any of the 3 lists, it is discarded. Signature File: --------------- You can create your own signature file for use by your email client. After you have configured which file the stamp should be saved, you can Print the Current Stamp to File. For more user flexibility, you can edit two text files in the PureMail directory - sig1.txt and sig2.txt. Any entries in these two files will be concatenated to the signature file. File sig1.txt is copied before the Stamp, file sig2.txt is copied after the Stamp. Determining the program status: ------------------------------- The bottom part of the user interface has 4 parts: The current time, the last time mail was filtered, what the program is doing, and how many emails have been processed and deleted. Troubleshooting: ---------------- 1) You don't seem to be getting any mail: Make sure your User Information is correct. Try sending mail to yourself and press Manual Filter if you can't wait for the auto-filter to kick in. Depending on how you have set up your 3 lists, your mail could be deleted or allowed. The status is listed at the bottom of the user interface. 2) Autofilter doesn't seem to be working but Manual Filter does: PureMail has Autofilter ON by default. If you stopped this, just press AutoFilter to ON again. 3) You have dialed in and connected to your ISP, but PureMail isn't processing any emails even if you know the mailbox isn't empty: Check your User Information. Make sure you are actually connected to your ISP - you can determine this by using your email program to check your mail. 4) When your email client gives you the error 'pop.lock is busy': That means that PureMail is busy querying your mail server. Just wait a few seconds and try again. 5) PureMail seems to be taking too long to filter your email: This is normal if you have 15 or more emails. If you have one or two, check your User Configuration. It's usually an incorrect password or userid. Optional Configuration: ----------------------- Once you are satisfied with the performance of PureMail, you can create a shortcut to it in your Startup Folder. That way, PureMail starts up transparently. Bugs, comments & suggestions: ----------------------------- Bugs, undefined behavior etc. and suggestions can be forwarded to the author, you can reach me by going to my web page and following the instructions on how to contact me. Warranty & licence: ------------------- See the license.txt text file Files: ------ This distribution of PureMail 1.0 should contain the following files: PureMail.exe Readme.txt License.txt