PP Hangs on Junk Messages from Hotmail

[burtp]

Lately, PP 4.5.0 has been hanging when trying to retrieve / process an email from Hotmail / Outlook which is clearly junk. The only way to fix this seems to login to Hotmail. Mark the email as spam, close PP and then restart PP. When I try to close PP, Windows 7 says that the app is not responding. Below is the diagnostic info from Windows. Looks like the antijunk DLL is the culprit. I can forward you an example email if that helps or provide whatever other diagnostic info you need. This happens at least 2-3 times a day. Thanks, in advance, for your help.

Quick Update: The issue only appears to occur on new junk messages. I tried moving the offending message from the Junk folder on Hotmail back to the Inbox, PP downloaded the message without issue.

Fault Module Name: AntiJunk.dll_unloaded
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 5a21e40c
Exception Offset: 0461aaf0
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Data: 00000008
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0f31
Additional Information 2: 0f3137665bbf0bb676c8a16f3fa76e52
Additional Information 3: 4041
Additional Information 4: 404111ee9bebb3e12423dfa0f44c8be9

[mjs]

This is something Jeff will want to look into further, in the interim I'm assuming that your version of AntiJunk is 4.5.0.0 (found in "Help">"About POP Peeper...").

Also have you made any recent changes involving AV/Firewall Security protection on your computer as of the time this issue has been occurring?

[mjs]

Quick Update: The issue only appears to occur on new junk messages. I tried moving the offending message from the Junk folder on Hotmail back to the Inbox, PP downloaded the message without issue.

RE: your update --- I'm assuming that PP flagged this message as Junk this time, is this correct?

[burtp]

Correct, AntiJunk is 4.5.0.0 as are other components. I have not made any manual changes to AV or Firewall, etc. However, who knows what Norton does in the background. I have experienced this issue in the past but it was very infrequent. Now it occurs regularly and daily. As the junk mail senders get more clever with non-printable characters and images which replace characters I suspect the filters may experience input or conditions that were not previously considered. Just a guess from 25 years of SW development in years gone by

[burtp]

Quick Update: The issue only appears to occur on new junk messages. I tried moving the offending message from the Junk folder on Hotmail back to the Inbox, PP downloaded the message without issue.

RE: your update --- I'm assuming that PP flagged this message as Junk this time, is this correct?

No, PP hung. I was able to stop the processing, but unless I remove the account from the autocheck list PP will hang the next time around. The email in question does not show up in PP and is not marked at junk. I have to go to Hotmail / Outlook on the web, mark the message as junk. Then I have to close PP, which produces the error message I originally posted, restart PP and all is OK again, well until the next Junk message hits my Hotmail inbox.

[mjs]

Quick Update: The issue only appears to occur on new junk messages. I tried moving the offending message from the Junk folder on Hotmail back to the Inbox, PP downloaded the message without issue.

RE: your update --- I'm assuming that PP flagged this message as Junk this time, is this correct?

No, PP hung. I was able to stop the processing, but unless I remove the account from the autocheck list PP will hang the next time around. The email in question does not show up in PP and is not marked at junk. I have to go to Hotmail / Outlook on the web, mark the message as junk. Then I have to close PP, which produces the error message I originally posted, restart PP and all is OK again, well until the next Junk message hits my Hotmail inbox.

In regards to the offending message getting moved back to the inbox that you referenced in your update where you say:

PP downloaded the message without issue.

What do you mean in reply to my query what PP did with the "Junk" message that "downloaded without issue"? .... since you say:

No, PP hung....

please clarify.... is there an issue or not for messages that are NOT "new" (that is, messages moved from "junk" folder back to the "inbox)?

[Jeff]

I'm a little confused by the sequence of events myself...

However, if PP hangs while "processing data" and you kill/restart PP, then any messages that were retrieved before the hang should still be in the list (as unprocessed, ie. "white" background) and PP will *not* try to process it again. Have you tried that?

But, yes, I would definitely like to see samples of messages. If you can provide multiple samples, that would be great. If the messages are in PP, you can view the message, then menu: File / Save message as.

Please email the samples as attachments to (support at esumsoft dot com), and include a short description to remind me and a link to forum thread.

Also: let me know what method you're using to access your Hotmail account -- Edit the account and refer to the 'server type' (hotmail/outlook, IMAP or POP3).

[burtp]

An email with full description of what happens, screen shots, error messages and files has been sent to support at esumsoft dot com. Thanks.

[Jeff]

This is for general information (I've already told burtp this) --

The samples that burtp sent me were from a spammer who sent him 7 MB of text. Most of the text was encoded using quoted-printable, presumably as a tactic to avoid spam filters. With this amount of encoded text, it was found that PP is not very efficient at decoding the text. If left alone, PPv4.5 would eventually process the message, but it would take an impractical amount of time.

This problem has been addressed, and will have a positive impact on all messages. Right now, I don't know how widespread this type of spam is, and I'm debating whether this should have a v4.x release. So if anybody thinks that they have seen a problem similar to this (ie. long delays during "processing data" OR when opening the message to view it) please let me know -- either reply here or email (support at esumsoft dot com) -- so that I have a better idea of how many people it affects.

[henry66]

. >> ... long delays during "processing data" OR when opening the message to view it) please let me know

yes, same here, again. for a while it was gone, but with 4.5.1 'processing' again can take ages - very slow countdown. though it does not HANG as such, will eventually finish.

does not seem to be provider-dependent: same on YAHOO, same on AOL, same on several others.

greetings - H

[Jeff]

For the record: AntiJunk did not change in v4.5.1 -- it's still v4.5.0.0. The fix that affected BurtP is slated for v5 release.

Do you have specific samples of messages causing a problem? If you're not sure which messages are causing a problem but think you can narrow it down -- right-click on a message and select AntiJunk -> Test message in sandbox. This will re-evaluate the message and show you the timings. The first line in the result will show the time in millisconds (ms). Anything less than 1000 ms (1 second) is probably negligible.

[henry66]

jeff, total correction of what i said above. when i said ''same results with all providers'', i meant email accounts and their providers - and the stuttering and very slow ''processing data'' was the same with all of them.

BUT: for some technical reason, i had at the same time changed my internet provider - same modem and router, but hooked up to another 'provider' - and that one created the stuttering.

couple of days later, i had the chance to switch within seconds between three such providers - again, same modem, same router, same settings, same laptop. and it was very clear: one of the providers made 'processing data' very slow and almost hanging, the other two flew through in split seconds.

so, what can it be with that one provider makes PP (or its junk mail system) slow down to a crawl, and the two others work perfectly well? all three were very fast, 50++Mbit/s lines, equally fast on anything but PP.

baffled - heinz -

[Jeff]

"Processing data" is the AntiJunk step so the slowness is most likely going to be the DNSBL or URIBL. These 2 features rely on your DNS. There's some built-in logic such that PP will temporarily disable these if they're taking too long, but it may still be noticeable on the initial message(s) (After checking the code: looks like if 2+ messages take 10s each, it should disable it; but if a check takes 1 minute, for example, that would be 2 minutes before it disabled).

I'm looking into alternative methods for this.