Moth Software Blog

What are the remaining 3 threats to email security?

Trixi — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:27:54 +0000

According to the Email Admin the amount of spam sent is getting less. Personally, I haven't noticed this, but I only get a few each day. However, there are some threats to email security remaining.

1. Malware being spread via email

Malware hasn't been a problem on Mac ever except for some tries like Mac Defender. Security experts have been warning for a few years now that this is expected to change. So far this hasn't happened.

2. Information leaks

Most likely, you will find that information is leaked by accident. An employee includes something in an email message that is considered sensitive. That email, once it leaves the protection of your company, can now be forwarded on or even intercepted in transit. The contents can then be easily exposed revealing trade secrets, private information or even embarrassing content.

Leaks will remain a problem forever because it's in human nature to be hasty. Don't you love the checks "Do you really want to send a mail to the evil outside address xxx?" that makes sending mails such a pleasure in corporate environments. Do these checks really work?

3. Go phish

Phishing is a threat that has been on the radar of most IT administrators for some time. And with recent data breaches ... millions of corporate email addresses have been compromised and are ready to be used in phishing attacks.

Once upon a time phishing mails were easily recognized by their awful english. But it seems that most spammers had their english improved or the writing of these mails was outsourced to english native speakers. Even I had to check for some mails the header information to see if a mail was spam or not.

And of course, it may be very possible that the recent trend of less spam gets reversed soon.

Mail Archiver 2.7.2 doesn't recognize Licenses

Trixi — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:10:15 +0000

A bug in the license validation code results in Mail Archiver 2.7.2 not recognizing valid licenses. This has been fixed for the next release 2.7.3, which you can download in the Download section of the Moth Software website.

Mail Archiver X 2.7.2 is available

Trixi — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:18:59 +0000

A new month and a new bug fix release for Mail Archiver. Mostly small stuff this time. The issue with scrolling was annoying. And some users couldn't archive from Postbox.

As usual you can download the new version from the Download page of Moth Software.

The following bugs were fixed:

Fixed a problem where the scrolling in the mail listbox didn't stop.
Added a menu item for showing the session logs on disk.
When cleaning odd html there is no longer a StackOverflowException.
When the trial is expired the lozenges in the window showing the remaining time now show up correctly.
When exporting to PDF the attachments aren’t longer exported 2 times.
Improved error handling when exporting to Filemaker.
Exporting to Filemaker with ODBC doesn’t work on 10.6. Not fixable.
Sorting by Mailbox, Date works again.
Fixed a problem finding Postbox mailboxes.
Improved error handling when sending session logs.
Fixed another problem with licensing.

The Atlantic: Gmail Account hacked!

Trixi — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:06:15 +0000

Via Tidbits I found a story where James Fallows from The Atlantic

describes how his wife's Email Account was hacked

what they went through to recover years of stored messages. It’s a compelling tale that will hopefully bring home the need for secure passwords and offline backups of cloud-based data.

The beginning of the Tale

She ... logged into her Gmail account with enormous relief, which lasted perhaps five seconds. When she looked at her Inbox, and her Archives, and even the Trash and Spam folders in her account, she found—absolutely nothing. Of her allocated 7 gigabytes of storage, 0.0 gigabytes were in use, versus the 4+ gigabytes shown the day before. Six years’ worth of correspondence and everything that went with it were gone. All the notes, interviews, recollections, and attached photos from our years of traveling through China.

All her work and private correspondence was gone.

Excuses, excuses

This was a loss whose sweeping magnitude was possible only because my wife had entrusted her data exclusively to the most professional of pros: Google’s operation in the cloud. If we had thought that data security was strictly up to us, we’d have made backups of some sort to limit the potential damage—much as we would lay in our own firewood and keep our own chickens and cows to be sure we’d never freeze or starve if normal supplies were cut off. In my own version of Depression-style thinking, and with that lightning strike in mind, I had always made triply redundant backups of anything that mattered to me, including e‑mail. Local on-disk backups of Gmail archives, via programs like Eudora and Thunderbird—or both. Online backups of those local backups, through SugarSync and Dropbox—and then more local backups on my other machines. But my wife had trusted the cloud and Google. And now?

In Google we trust??? Really? They don't even have support people you can talk to. No backup, really?

Data Recovery - Google style

Perhaps the most startling thing I learned at Google about my wife’s case was how “lucky” we had been. Lucky not in having friends we could turn to in the otherwise automated and unapproachable Google edifice—though, of course, we were—but simply in the timing of the attack. If this had happened six months or a year earlier, or if it happened even today at most other e-mail services, the archives would likely have been gone forever. It was only because of the Undeletion Project that recovery, although slow, was feasible at all.

And a bit further down as justification for the "new" Undeletion Project:

But according to Google’s legal department, its higher and more stringent duty is to ensure that messages are erased, if whoever is in charge of an account wants them gone.

The Morale of the Story

The outcome for the author is to make stronger passwords. But there is a reason why users have simple passwords. The human brain can't store more complicated or even more passwords. What we need is a better way to manage passwords and then a better way to manage security. For myself I'm using Wallet to store my passwords. It's only one click in the browser to enter user name and password. But I also keep multiple backups in different locations of my most important data.

Google is known for not having people available to talk to. Why would I trust my professional correspondence to a company without support?

And finally: you are always responsible for your own data.

Mail Archiver X 2.7.1 is available

Trixi — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:12:37 +0000

Today a small bug fix version of Mail Archiver X has been released.

Added support for Postbox 3.
The archival speed for Outlook is now 100times greater than before.
Fixed a problem where mails from AppleMail weren't archived.
Changed from using zip to dmg for the download.
Fixed a problem with the validation of the license file for the new Fastspring store.

As usual you can download the new version from the Download page of Moth Software.

IMPORTANT: If you buy Mail Archiver X from the new Fastspring store then you need to use this version for the registration!

Searching in AppleMail

Trixi — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:09:28 +0000

Inspired by an article from Bruce Tognazzini about searching Mail on the iPhone I'll have a look at searching in AppleMail.

Bruce Tognazzini answers a question which is better - browse or search - on the iPhone (via Daring Fireball).

The Mail search for iOS is hopeless. You have to specify which folder the message is in. If I knew that, I probably could have just pawed through that particular folder and found it. Strangely, the Spotlight search at the Springboard level in the exact same iOS has no problem searching across all mail folders. Why should you have to know to avoid the built in search and, instead, leave Mail, go to the desktop, then to Spotlight, in order to look for an email? It makes no sense.

Is the search for emails in AppleMail/Finder any better than Mail on the iPhone?

Let's look first at the Finder and then in more detail at AppleMail.

Searching in Finder for emails

In Finder I want to search for files. Not emails. Here the situation seems very similar to the iPhone.

I really need to take the time to find out how not to find emails. Always clicking on "Filename contains xxx" and in addition adding a search criteria for file is so annoying. Have I ever used the Spotlight search in the upper right corner? No, never. That window was always odd.

Searching in AppleMail

The search in AppleMail has really gotten better in Lion. In Snow Leopard I hated the search.

If I type "test" in the searchbox, I get this nice menu, where the first entry is "Message contains xxx". The persons are a really good addition. Unfortunately, they seem to contain also the spam "persons" as the screenshot shows. The next part is about mails containing the search text as subject. For users who can't remember where they put their mailboxes the last part lists all mailboxes with the search text.

If you select one entry from the menu you get a two part lozenge (does this have a special name?). The first part in middle blue has a tiny, tiny menu icon. That this is a menu I only found out when writing this blog entry. If you see something like in the screenshot you can change between from, to and Entire Message in this menu. When clicking on the search text you get back to the original search text you typed in. You need to double-click this, which isn't really obvious. This could have been solved better.

What also isn't really good design is the search bar for the mailboxes. The searchbox is on the right side and the mailboxes bar is quite on the left. This is so very far from the search box even on this quite narrow window!

What am I missing here?

Search should be easy, fast and powerful as needed. Search in AppleMail is relatively easy, rather slow and not very powerful. If I let the mailboxes bar have the selection "all" then the search isn't too bad. If I want to search one specific mailbox and notice that I searched the wrong mailbox I find it so annoying that my search text gets deleted after switching mailboxes.

Saved searches are powerful, but not easy. For a quick search I find them much too cumbersome.

Final thought from Bruce:

I do fault [Apple] for failing to support users as the users move from beginner to veteran. It doesn't help Apple's sales when their most important sales force, we experienced users, are constantly frustrated by Apple's failure to keep up with or even show the slightest concern for our expanding needs.

Oh yes, Apple, this is really frustrating. I detest hidden features (like the menu in the searchbox) or perhaps I'm just getting old.

New Store: Fastspring

Trixi — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:03:31 +0000

From now on there is a new store available. This has changed from eSellerate to Fastspring. The serial numbers remain the same. The new store is just looking much nicer. For now the old store url will remain working at

eSellerate Store

The new store is available by clicking on the Store button in the main menu or at the url below:

Fastspring Store

The application will be changing urls with the next .1 update.

Mail Archiver X in Kleper Report

Trixi — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:41:11 +0000

Mail Archiver X has been featured in the latest Kleper Report on Digital Publishing.

Mail Archiver X 2.7 is a powerhouse program for securing the messages contents of an email application or client. It enables the user to consolidate, clean, format, and permanently archive email in its native Valentina database format, or in FileMaker, PDF, mbox, MySql, Text, Evernote, or XML formats.

The program is capable of consolidating email collections from multiple email applications, providing a single file that can be searched quickly. In addition the use of Mail Archiver X allows the user to overcome any message storage restriction imposed by the email client or the service provider.

Mail Archiver X works with most popular email programs, including Entourage, Eudora, Mail, Outlook, Postbox, Powermail, Thunderbird, and standard mbox. During import it intelligently rids messages of unneeded characters and code. The program also provides its own email database browser.

The workflow is quite simple, and easy to perform. The user first selects the mail application from which to archive, and selects the mailboxes and range of dates. Next he or she selects the export format and executes the archive process. The archived messages then appear in the Mail Archiver X Mail Browser.

Final version of Mail Archiver X 2.7 is available

Trixi — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:34:53 +0000

Today the final version of Mail Archiver X 2.7 is available. You can download the new version in the Download section. I have written about the new features here. The most important new features are Lion compatibility and the move from Carbon to Cocoa.

The Email Admin on mailbox sizes

Trixi — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:39:49 +0000

The results of a Survey by The Email Admin

(Image by Mr_efes on Flickr.)

The Email Admin posted the results of a survey where the poster asked his readers to answer some questions about what they think makes a good size for a mailbox. Here is the result:

So to summarise, the vast majority of regular users' mailboxes are either in the 512MB range, or in the 1 to 5 GB range. In about half the cases, special users get a bump to 5 GB or larger. Most of us are happy with our mailbox sizes, but if we were going to increase them, it's only the special users who'd really see a big change, and no one seems to want to go above 25 GB for mail.

Exchange only!

Considering that the majority of the survey takers are on Exchange (> 90%) it's not surprising that nobody wants more than 25GB. But it's really interesting with the development of harddisks in the last 10 years nothing really changed in the average mailbox size.

One commenter points to a Microsoft technical article White Paper: Planning for Large Mailboxes with Exchange 2007 from 2011:

The .ost file performance is another factor to consider if there are mailboxes in your organization that exceed 2 GB. If users of those mailboxes are running Outlook 2007 in cached mode, those users may experience degraded performance as the size of their .ost file grows to more than 2 GB.

Up to 5 gigabytes (GB): This size should provide a good user experience on most hardware.

This is Microsoft in 2011!