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BLScanPlus "Pro" Tutorial


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Tutorial Need to get up and running quickly?, learn more quickly doing it than reading about it? ok, no problem. Here is a tutorial to get you up and running.



BLScanPlus To begin with let's start with the BLScanPlus framework.

First of all (and if not done already) download the software from the downloads page and install as per the installation page, then come back to this page.

Done it?, good. Having installed the program you should have a light blue BLScanPlusPro icon appear on your desktop. Double click it and the BLScanPlus welcome  screen appears, it should look something like the image below.



Your screen may look different to mine because I'm running an old version.



Tabs So having got the application window open, let's do something...

First of all, the Welcome screen is the first "tab". At the top of the screen, you can see a row of tabs (that look like the tabs in a paper file folder or address book) and are labelled Welcome, BLScan, BLComp, BLJoin etc. If you click on any of these labels, the screen which switch to that tab.

You may also notice that the region at the very top (the header, where the time and date are), plus the region at the bottom (the footer, where the row of five buttons are) remain static. So the header/footer regions provide information or functions that are always available regardless of which tab is currently selected.



Header This shows the current day, date, time and version number. The date/time is derived from your computers clock, so if your computer date/time is wrong the header will be wrong too. The curious number in brackets (38528) is the date code used by Mailwasher for blacklist entries, you will find the same date code format in Microsoft programs such as Excel. More about that later, but this date code is actually the number of elapsed days since 01/01/1900 (where 01/01/1900 is designated as being day 1), why that date?, I have absolutely no idea!



Footer The footer...

When you installed BLScanPlus, you probably installed into C:\Program Files\BLScanPlusPro, this is the product folder which contains the un-installer and also contains the actual BLScanPlus program folder.

If you click the button marked "Show Program Folder",  the BLScanPlus program folder will be opened in a standard explorer window. In that folder you can see the BLScanPlus program files and some folders that store various information which will include some settings that you will specify later. Close the program folder by clicking on the cross at the top right of the explorer window.


When a BLScanPlus utility runs and generates some output files, the files are written into the program folder. As you can see above, I like to see the folder displayed as shown with the files, size, type and date modified. If yours does not look like this then left-click on "View" at the top and select "Details". Whenever you open this particular folder, it will then look like mine above.

So pressing the button marked "Show Program Folder" opens the BLScanPlus program folder.

The button marked "Show Mailwasher Folder" does the same thing in that it opens an explorer window showing the folder where Mailwasher stores its data. This maybe greyed out on your screen, we'll sort that out in a moment. If it is not greyed out, click it, you will see the Mailwasher folder where files such as the blacklist, trash and filters file are stored.

The "Reset Setup" and "Save Setup" buttons are used to store the current state of BLScanPlus for next time. BLScanPlus assumes default values for all of the various options available in each utility. If you change these and always want to use those particular options, you can save the setup using the "Save Setup" button and discard your changes using the "Reset Setup". The only thing that the "Save Setup" button does not store are the options on the "Settings" tab, that tab has its own Save and Reset.

The "Exit" button exits the program.



Settings Let's now set up the various settings...

To access the Settings options, click on the "Settings" tab.



1
 Mailwasher Folder:
The first "group" of controls is marked as "Mailwasher Folder". If you have Mailwasher installed, BLScanPlus will automatically set the "MW Folder" field to MailwasherPro or Mailwasher depending on which version you have.

If the "MW Folder" is already set you can move on.

If the "MW Folder" field is blank and you have Mailwasher installed, it is likely that you have installed Mailwasher in an unusual place, you are on a network for instance. To set this field click on "Some other path...", click on the button marked "MW Folder" and navigate to the Mailwasher application folder. If you are not sure where this is, start Mailwasher and click "Help" then "About". The link shown at the bottom of that dialog box is the path you need to navigate to. When you have done that click on the footer button marked "Show Mailwasher Folder" and check that the window that opens is the one you intended.


There are two checkboxes in this group;

Always read Blacklist/Trash files from this location
Selecting this checkbox will instruct BLScanPlus to always gather the blacklist and trash files directly from your Mailwasher folder. This saves you having to specify this path over and over whenever you use the utilities or the need to do a manual copy/paste of the file (into the Program folder).

Write the new blacklist file generated by BLScan directly to the folder selected above
Selecting this checkbox will allow BLScanPlus to write a new blacklist file generated by the utility BLScan, back into the Mailwasher folder. This saves you having to do a manual copy/paste for the new file (from the BLScanPlus program folder to the Mailwasher folder). If you leave this unchecked, when the utility BLScan generates a new blacklist file, it will write it into the BLScanPlus program folder.

One quick point to mention is that BLScan does retain a backup of any file it reads in, so even if you overwrite your master file (in the Mailwasher folder), you can always get the original back should you need it. The backup is in the BLScanBackup folder in the BLScanPlus program folder. A second backup is made in the Mailwasher folder.
2
 View web using:
For displaying a web page, BLScanPlus will use your default web browser. If you want to use a different browser, then you can specify the path to it here.
3
 For BLScan wildcarding use:
The manual wildcarding operation of BLScan pops up a multi-button dialog box. In the windows evnviroment, there are some limitations on how many buttons and the general look and feel of dialog boxes. I provided three variations on this, the basic, a three button nested dialog and a four button style. The default is the middle selection, maybe try these different styles out at a later date and select your preference then. Let's use the default (middle) option for now.

4
 Colors:
The "Fore" and "Back" color buttons bring up a color pallette allowing you to choose your preferred foreground and background colors.
5
 View result files using:
Most of the utilities have a button to view any files generated (that are written to the BLScanPlus program folder). This option specifies whether any such files are displayed using the Notepad or Wordpad editor.
6
 Timestamp output files:
This checkbox instructs BLScanPlus to always append a timestamp onto the end of output file names. This is useful to see which files are new/old. If this option is not checked, BLScanPlus will overwrite any previous output files of the same name.
7
 Always Save Setups/Settings on Exit:
The default values of the settings and options on the various tabs have been chosen to be the most likely usage. If you set different options or specify files in specific locations, you can save your setup and settings whenever you press the Exit button in the footer. BLScanPlus will then startup re-using that state.
8
 Save/Reset Settings on this tab:
These buttons save and reset the settings chosen on the Settings tab. The two similar buttons in the footer save the current state of all tabs except the Settings tab. If you select the Always Save Setups/Settings on Exit option, the state of all tabs will be saved on Exit.




ok, we're setup and ready to roll. Let's run a utility, to start with we'll take a look at BLScan.

[This might be a good moment to get another coffee or go raid the cookie jar. Done it?, good and mind you don't get crumbs onto your keyboard. I've done that a few too many times, now som  of my k ys ar  a b t st cky.]



BLScan Let's start with BLScan and scan your blacklist file. 

The purpose of BLScan is to replace individual addresses for a given domain with a single wildcarded domain. By doing this you can make the blackist file shorter and blacklist out any future emails that come from any username that originates from that domain.




Select the BLScan tab. Something I have not mentioned so far is that if you hover the cursor over a button on a tab, a tooltip will be shown, as per the image below.




Assuming you have defined the Settings tab option Always read Blacklist/Trash files from this location, the path to the blacklist file will already be set and will point at the file in the Mailwasher folder. If you do not want this, press the "Blacklist" button and navigate to the blacklist file.

Select the "Scan" option and set the "threshold" as 2, click on "Start".

BLScan will now scan your blacklist file. When it finishes, it will have generated three output files. These files will be written to the BLScanPlus program folder and you can check that they are present by pressing the "Show Program Folder" button. A quicker way of inspecting the results is to use the buttons on the lower right.

Click on the button "Summary", this shows you what BLScan found. You can see the prevalence of various domains in your blacklist, some are friendly, others will be from spammers. This file shows you all of the domains that occurred more than the threshold value (that we set as 2). By looking at this list, you can see the predominant domains where your spam is coming from.

The button "Multiples" shows you a list of what you could potentially add to your blacklist to filter these frequently occurring domains out. In practice you would not want to use this entire list as some friendly domains are probably in it. The button "All" shows you a list of what you could potentially add to your blacklist to filter every single domain out. Again, in practice you would not want to use this entire list either.


So when we scan the blacklist, we do not alter it, but we get several summaries of its content in various files that are written into the program folder.

To actually modify the blacklist and replace all of those individual addresses by wildcards, we could do simple but tedious manual cutting/pasting of the wildcards shown up by the scan. But a much better way is to use the second mode of BLScan called manual wildcarding. The only thing to beware of is the choice of threshold, if you have a huge number of domains that occur multiple times, the manual wildcarding process can take a while to complete. So you might be better off starting with a threshold of 10 and then maybe using 5 or 2 at a later date.




Select "Manual wildcarding"

Select "Use Date of Zero"

Unselect "Retain Redundant Wildcards"

Select "Show Addresses in Log"

Select "Use Ignore List"


To see what each of these options actually does, hover the cursor over each and read the tooltip.

Press "Start"

BLScan will now walk through the blacklist and stop each time it encounters a domain that occurs more than the threshold number of times (we set the threshold to 2). When it finds a domain occurring >2 times, it will show the relevant addresses and ask what you want to do. You can respond in three ways using;
  • 'yes' - this will replace these blacklist entries by a single wildcard (e.g. fred@spam.com, joe@spam.com, bill@spam.com, john@spam.com will be replaced by *@spam.com).
  • 'no' - this will leave the blacklist entries for that domain as is, no changes will be made.
  • 'ignore' - this will ignore the entry, use this for friendly domains. If you receive legitimate email from the domain that is shown, it's a good idea to use 'ignore' to ignore it, this domain name will then get stored and BLScan will skip over it (i.e. ignore it) the next time it encounters it.
It is fairly obvious which domains are spam so use 'yes' for those, if you're not sure use 'no', if you know that domain is definitely not spam because it's your favorite shop or maybe your work domain, best friends site (and you get legitimate emails from it) then hit 'ignore'.

Keep going through the list (this could take a long time if your blacklist is large). If this starts taking forever because you're blacklist is huge then you can always press Cancel to jump out of BLScanPlus and then restart it, but using a higher threshold value (maybe 10) instead.



When you're done, BLScan will generate a new blacklist file that can be used to replace your existing blacklist file, the new file will have all of the domains you chose wildcarded and all of the individual addresses for those domains removed! This makes the blacklist smaller, quicker to load and any new spam from any username on those domains will be detected by the blacklist. Using the options on the Settings tab, you can select the option to write the new blacklist file directly into your Mailwasher folder. Make sure that Mailwasher is not running before the last step, BLScanPlus will remind you of this.




You've done it! The first time around is the worst, since you have to step through loads of domains, but that little job is now done.


Now to finish with let's do a little check. You don't need to do this everytime, I just want to show you something...

If you still have BLScanPlus running, hit "Start" again with the same options selected.

This time, you will notice that when BLScan steps through your blacklist;
  • All those domains that you decided to wildcard (when you pressed 'yes' during manual wildcarding) no longer appear.
  • Any domains that have multiple blacklist entries, but you chose to ignore (when you pressed 'ignore' during manual wildcarding) are also not shown. They are still in the blacklist file, but you do not get prompted whether you want to wildcard these because you are comfortable with there being multiple addresses from that domain and you don't want it wildcarded, that is what 'ignore' means.
  • The only domains that appear this time are the ones that you were not sure about (the ones where you entered 'no' during manual wildcarding).
The point here is that once wildcarded or ignored, you won't be asked about these domains again. So after maybe a week of receiving new emails, when you next do manual wildcarding, you don't need to trawl through everything all over again, only the ones you are unsure about and any new domains will be shown.

I actually took the time to go through manual wildcarding of my own blacklist file several times, to get it to the point where I did not have any domains that I was not sure of. Remember that an incoming email is matched against your Friends List first, so if you manually wildcarded a domain, but you have friends on that domain that are in your Friends List, their emails will still get through. I am probably a bit aggressive with my own blacklist and basically anything that looks dubious gets wildcarded. I wrote some filters to look for some keywords just in case I had been overly enthusiastic, I also use Totter once a week too, more on that later.

As you have seen, the first time you do manual wildcarding, it can take a long time, but after that, it's much easier.


So finish off and go through the remainder of the list, double check them and then you're done. I run BLScan once every week to wildcard out any new spam domains that appear.

A last point to finish on;

If you go press the "Show Mailwasher Folder" button, you will see the Blacklist.txt file in the folder, but also another file of the same name with a timestamp number after it (such as Blacklist_02032005111530.txt). The latter timestamped file is actually your original blacklist file and this is only stored as a backup, Mailwasher does not read it. So if you wanted to put your blacklist back as it was before you ran BLScan, you could delete the Blacklist.txt file and rename the timestamped blacklist file back to Blacklist.txt. Thus you could replace the new file with the original.




So by now you've probably got the hang of it. Run manual wildcarding perhaps once a week to wildcard out any new domains. When you have some time visit the BLScan page to get a grip on the various options and other functions. Don't forget about the tooltips, just hover the cursor over the button to see what each does.




Time to look at something else.

[You look like you're slightly uncomfortable?, I guess the coffee and cookies have made it through your system, so why don't you go to the bathroom now and come back in a few minutes. Better to do that now, rather than sit there doing the leg waggles.]




Totter ok, let's look at Totter




Totter is only useful if you chose the option in Mailwasher to put your deleted emails into a Recycle Bin. To turn this option on go to the Mailwasher "Tools" menu (at the top), select "Options" and click on the "Summary" tab. Check the box marked 'Allow deleted email to be restored from the summary screen'.

With this option set, when you delete an email with Mailwasher, the deleted email goes into a recycle bin (called the trash file) which is stored in the Mailwasher folder in a file called Trash.rot135. This file is readable but encrypted. If there is something in your trash you should not have deleted, you can pull it back out of the recycle bin.




So assuming you had the option mentioned above already selected then you will have some deleted emails in your trash file. If you have only just turned this option on, you won't have any files in your trash file yet, so come back to this tutorial in a few days when you've collected some trash.




Start BLScanPlus and select the Totter tab.




Assuming you have defined the Settings tab option Always read Blacklist/Trash files from this location, the path to the blacklist file will already be set and will point at the file in the Mailwasher folder. If you do not want this, press the "Trash File" button and navigate to the trash file.


Totter requires a list of email addresses, press "Create" on the "Address List" row, an empty file opens. Type your email addresses into the top of the blank file. If you have more than one email account press "Return" and enter your next email address on the next line, press 'Return', the next and so on. When you have entered your address(es) exit and save the file. The file ends up looking something like this;

myaccount@myisp.com
myotheraccount@myisp.com
forummail@forum.co.uk
oldaccount@oldisp.com


Totter will then prompt for a list of search strings. Press "Create" on the "String List" row, an empty file opens. Enter these one at a time, pressing 'Return' after each. Totter will search through your trash for these strings and you will choose later whether you want these to be treated as case sensitive. Note also that any extra spaces or punctuation will be treated as part of the string.

So maybe enter your first name, maybe the street name where you live, the name of your company, your home town or any other words you would like to search your trash for. If you have a name like "Pat" it may be an idea to add an extra space on the end e.g. "Pat " or maybe a comma e.g. "Pat," to reduce the number of false matches (you do not need to put the search strings in quotes by the way). When you have entered all of your search strings exit and save the file. The file will end up looking something like this;

Joseph
joseph
Joe,
joe,
Lewis
lewis
Chrysler
21 Main Street
111-1234-5678

Remember that you can add spaces before/after each string to cut down on false matches. For example, adding an extra space onto Lewis (and lewis) would prevent a false match on an email that contained the town name of Lewisham.


Unselect the "Addresses" check box in the "Case sensistive..." group, i.e. whether the addresses were typed in or are found in upper/lower case does not matter.

Select the "Strings" check box in the "Case sensistive..." group, i.e. upper/lower case does matter for the search strings.


In the "Generate Result for..." group, select "All time".

Press "Search"

Totter will then search your Trash file using the email addresses and search strings you specified.




You will see that Totter generates a number of output files.

Take a look at the Totals file (by pressing the "TXT" button next to the word "Totals"). This file shows you what Totter found, how many addresses went to which email address, how many times each search string was found.

Take a look at the Summary file (by pressing the "CSV" button next to the word "Summary"). This file shows you what Totter found, but shows you the list of messages where a match was found for your searches. This file is in CSV format that can be read by spreadsheet programs such as Excel, If you do not have a spreadsheet program like Excel you can look at the TXT equivalent instead.

Take a look at the Full List file (by pressing the "CSV" button next to the words "Full List"). This file shows you what Totter found but this time shows every single message in the trash file.

Finally, take a look at the IP List (by pressing the "CSV" button next to the words "IP List"). This file shows you the likely originating IP address for each message.


Using Totter you can see which of your email addresses are taking the most hits and if anything in your trash might be useful (and was perhaps deleted in error).




If you want to pull a message back from the trash, start Mailwasher and press Control-S and click on the "Mail Log" tab. You may need to change the option box at the bottom to see older emails. Scan down to the email you want, select it with a left mouse click, right click on it and select 'Restore Email'. The message will be resent to your inbox. (If you find that restored emails immediately get dumped back into the trash, there is a nifty filter you can use here).







ok, by now you've probably got a grip on BLScan and Totter. The other utilities are more obvious to use and learn how to drive them, see the relevant web page.




[What? you only went a few minutes ago! No this time hang on, I just want to cover a few other bits.]



Files
 Having defined the settings earlier, you have not had to move any files around. But all of the utilities can read an input file from a path or you can also move/copy the files into the BLScanPlus program folder. For utilities such as BLComp where you may be comparing two files which are perhaps not associated with Mailwasher, the best thing to do is open the BLScanPlus program folder and move/copy the files into it. If you want to make a copy of any of your files that are currently being used by Mailwasher, open the Mailwasher folder, then open the BLScanPlus program folder and copy the files from one window to the other. So even if you want to copy files between the folders, having the ability to open the two folders makes it much easier.

As always take care when moving files around not to inadvertantly delete your Mailwasher files in particular. If you do want to move files around, I always recommend working with copies or maybe storing a backup copy before you start making changes. As always, make sure Mailwasher is not running when you copy/move files around.

One additional feature of BLScan not mentioned above, is that BLScan always makes a backup copy of any files it reads, these are deposited into the folder called BLScanBackup that you can see in the BLScanPlus program folder. Also, if BLScan puts a new blacklist file into your Mailwasher folder, it also copies the original into the Mailwasher folder, so you in fact have two backup copies your blacklist files.








The remaining utilities are not the type that would get used 'every day' but are used occasionally, especially if you are sharing files with other users. I think these are sufficiently simple so as to not require a tutorial. A description of each is given below, see the relevant web page for assistance to their usage.



UnRotter UnRotter can be used to decrypt a Mailwasher ROT135 file, such as the Trash file.





The Trash.rot135 file is encrypted in ROT135 format, if you want a decrypted version of this entire file, UnRotter will read the Trash.rot135 file from the Mailwasher folder and create a fully decoded version in the BLScanPlus program folder. You can then see the entire contents of your Trash file.



BLComp Compares two blacklist files.





If you want to compare two blacklist files, perhaps a 'before' and 'after', or maybe yours versus somebody elses, you can copy the two files into the BLScanPlus program folder and use BLComp to work out how they differ. BLComp can optionally compare the blacklist and/or whitelist sections.

BLComp can also read a list of email addresses, so if someone cut their blacklist section out of their blacklist file, or supplied you with a list, then you can still use BLComp.



BLJoin
 Joins two blacklist files together (without duplication).




Some users are sharing their blacklist files. But if someone sends you their blacklist file, how do you add the contents of their blacklist file to yours? The answer is BLJoin. BLJoin can optionally join the blacklist and/or whitelist sections. The best way to do this is to put the two files into the BLScanPlus program folder and run BLJoin. BLJoin will then generate a new file with both files joined but without any duplications of addresses.

BLJoin can also read a list of email addresses, so if someone cut their blacklist section out of their blacklist file, or supplied you with a list, you can still use BLJoin.



BLConv
 Converts wildcarded domains in a blacklist file into a set of filters for exchange with other users.




Rather than sharing blacklist files, I had an idea some time ago to trade wildcarded domains as filters. BLConv will read your blacklist file, extract all of the wildcarded domains and generate a set of filters. These can then be sent to other users who can add them to their filters.txt file. This is actually better than trading blacklist files for the reasons discussed on the BLConv page. The best way to use BLConv is to copy your blacklist file into the BLScanPlus folder or specify the path to the Mailwasher folder.



The End
 Phew!, well I'm all talked out, so I'm going to stop right here. If you see any errors in this tutorial or think it should include more things then let me know.

There are some new features in V4, read about them here.

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