Sorting the Spam from the Ham 249
MrClever writes "The Sydney Morning Herald (Aust) is running an article about the merits of Bayesian filtering and a good plain-english description of how it works. Might be handy if you need to explain it to non-technophiles. The main thing that may be useful is a Bayesian spam filter written to drop straight into Outlook 2k/XP available here and written in Python by Mark Hammond."
Math buffs might enjoy reading
these pages
or browsing
this writeup
and its many links.
But without spam... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But without spam... (Score:3, Insightful)
I went from checking my email every 5-10 minutes to a handful of times a day.
Re:But without spam... (Score:2)
Subject: You Blocked My MSN.
I now have a new purpose in life. To reply to each and every one of them, even if the address exists or not.
RE: You Blocked My MSN
BECAUSE YOU KEEP SPAMMING ME ASSHOLE!!!
Finally.... (Score:2, Funny)
Why not here? (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet it'd work - and imagine if we did it to stories too! Maybe it'd reject all Taco's dupe submissions.
Re:Why not here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not here? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why not here? (Score:2, Insightful)
Umm, a naive Bayesian filter would score duplicate posts highly, because after all they contain all the same words that were good last time.
What I want (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What I want (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, even a fee or mental anguish would suffice...
Re:What I want (Score:2)
I'm personally a proponent of tar-and-feathering, but that's just me. After a few times walking around like a deranged Big Bird, I think spammers might find a real job.
Re:What I want (Score:4, Informative)
Any Perl programmers out there? (Score:2)
Actually, I would love to have the same thing. Popfile is all Perl and open-source, so it could probably
Re:What I want (Score:5, Informative)
1. Manual training: there is a tool called 'sa-learn'. You can pipe a message to it, or point it to a mailbox, and specify whether the mail is spam or ham.
2. Automatic training: if the score of the mail is significantly low (definitely spam) or significantly high (definitely ham), it will automatically train on the message. This may seem useless, but it's useful in that SA will then start to figure out patterns in spam or ham that don't trigger its rules.
I read mail with Mutt, and I've remapped the 'd'elete key to instead throw the message into a 'ham' mbox, and added a 'S'pam mapping to throw the message into a 'spam' mbox. Then I added a nightly cron job to run sa-learn over the two mboxes and truncate them. This has worked very, very well for me... In I haven't had a single false positive since Bayes kicked in about two months ago, and I got my first false negative in about two weeks today. I typically trap 10-15 spams a day.
One thing to notice: even if you enable it, Bayesian filtering won't kick in until you've recognized at least 200 spam and 200 ham messages. Took me a long time to figure that out (I had plenty of spam, but I wasn't training it on ham at all, which is why I started remapping the mutt commands).
As far as installing it on a server, your users don't have to be able to read each others' mail. I have it installed so that my wife and I each have our own bayes dbs, so neither of us has to read each others' mail. Plus, different users will regard different mail as spam: anything about the Pittsburgh Steelers going to my mailbox is probably spam, but not hers; similarly, anything regarding Linux going to her mailbox is probably spam, but not mine.
Re:What I want (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you mind sharing your
Re:What I want (Score:2)
You can look at my macros for spam classification [aperiodic.net]. (Linked instead of posted directly because slashcode kept inserting unwanted spaces in them.)
With these, "S" will classify an email as spam. "H" will reclassify a false positive--it's designed to operate on an email that SpamAssassin has munged as spam and won't work on regular emails. I haven't bothered to write a macro to train regular emails as ham, though I probably should.
--Phil (Mutt Mafia member since 1998)
Re:What I want (Score:2)
Re:What I want (Score:4, Interesting)
macro index d ~/Mail/bham^my
macro pager d ~/Mail/bham^my
macro index S ~/Mail/bspam^my
macro pager S ~/Mail/bspam^my
Then the relevant sections of my crontab look like this:
0 2 * * *
15 2 * * *
In another post (as well as on several sites on the web), it's recommended to bind a key to pipe the message directly to sa-learn. I read my mail on the server, which is an embarrassingly old machine, and sa-learn takes on the order of 30 seconds per email--not fun when you're just doing 'that last check of email before heading home'. Copying the mail to a file is just about instantaneous, and the sa-learn can do its dirty work while I'm sleepting (or watching The Office, as the case may be).
Re:What I want (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What I want (Score:2)
I was actually thinking of forking the popfile system to work with IMAP.
How to filter bloodninja? (Score:2, Funny)
bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
Britne
This is bad news!!! (Score:4, Funny)
I've now lost one of my primary arguments for switching my colleagues to Mozilla!
Re:This is bad news!!! (Score:2)
I've now lost one of my primary arguments for switching my colleagues to Mozilla!
Then switch them to kmail. Kmail has a pass-through script filter option that would allow you to use any console-mode spam filter for Linux, such as bogofilter.
Re:This is bad news!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is bad news!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is bad news!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? If more computer products benefit, don't we all? Anything that makes Outlook better is good in my book. Perhaps this will eliminate some virus-and-worm-carrying spam--and that's good for
Re:This is bad news!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
I use MS Office under Crossover Office because it gives me the features I want (admittedly, one of them is the ability to share identically functional documents with Windows users) so I definitely agree with your perspective. In the case of Mozilla, there has been a great ruckus around here about spam, and I kept telling people it didn't affect me because I used Mozilla w/ Bayesian filters.
Re:This is bad news!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently reviewed 7 client-side spam filters and ended up picking Spambully [spambully.com]. It's not free and it's not perfect but for our environment (Win/outlook 2k2 w/ a weird mirapoint IMAP server and multiple PCs per user (so email needs to stay on the server)) it was the
SpamAssassin works for me (even on Exchange) (Score:5, Interesting)
I have written on here before how I have saved myself a lot of hassle over the last few months by installing SA. I now stop 100+ messages a day (usually more like 140 now).
My stats tell me that since Feb, I've stopped over 15K Spam messages. Hot damn.
Where I currently work now we have Exchange and I wanted SpamAssassin on there, but we weren't getting the money approved to put it on.
So I hacked in SpamAssassin via an Exchange 2000/2003 EventSink.
If you want the code for it, feel free to grab it from http://www.cardboardutopia.com/ExchangeSpamFilter
But do note that if you have many users on your machine, you aren't going to want to use this - an EventSink on Exchange runs in serial, so SpamAssassain's Perl script (the spamc/d doesn't work under Win32) will get executed on every incoming mail, and it will have to wait until it is done before it gets the next one.
We process about 2000-5000 incoming messages a day and it does okay, but we have a very light load.
Re:SpamAssassin works for me (even on Exchange) (Score:2, Informative)
SpamAssassin, set at 5 (after I got a false positive at 4) stops about 75-80% of spam, but with some more rules from me (how did SpamAssassin let 'huge c-cks' get through?!) stop closer to 90%.
The only solution I've tried that worked well has been white lists, but that only works so well because I don't make a lot of new friends
Re:SpamAssassin works for me (even on Exchange) (Score:2, Funny)
The term "asset" shows up in 90% of our mail - it is amusing how many issues the companies in our sector have with poorly written filters that think "asset" is a bad word.
I suggested that we start referring to the same concept as "fuckerbabies" but it hasn't caught on yet.
Re:SpamAssassin works for me (even on Exchange) (Score:2, Interesting)
We recently switched to SpamBayes, and our false-positive rate so far is 6 out of 2200+ spams (almost 12 days of traffic, with certain foreign charactersets, malformed email headers and blacklisted ema
Re:SpamAssassin works for me (even on Exchange) (Score:5, Informative)
Spambayes (Score:5, Informative)
Every so often I go in and take out some old, old spam, just to make sure my current preferences are being represented and that's all the maintenance that's required.
This is, however, the second time I've trained the filter. The first time, it incorrectly identified my FreeBSD status mails as spam, and from then on was throwing those into the Spam folder. My own fault, though, since I hadn't included any of these messages in my representative ham.
If you run Outlook, download this filter and use it. You'll be doing yourself, and a world that doesn't need fat-injected, herbally enhanced penises, a favor.
Popfile (Score:3, Informative)
You can run it locally on Windows or Linux. But, you can also set it up on a server and then use it to filter e-mail from multiple client machines. That's what I like about it. I have a home machine in my basement office but also upstairs in the TV room. Unlike plug-ins that only work locally, I can have
Re:Spambayes (Score:4, Insightful)
I always felt that the whole point of spam being annoying was that it wasted bandwidth. It gets sent to my server, and then I have to download it all from my server, and then it gets sorted away from my eyes in my client.
It is fairly trivial if you get enough regular mail for it to matter, and you are on a fast connection.
But I can't tell you how annoying it is to be on a slow dial-up connection and download 50 messages and then see that they all got filtered into the spam folder and that there were no "real" messages.
While there is a nice feeling of seeing them all get caught, it is annoying to have to wait for a download (and pay for it) and then get no return on the investment.
That is why I always try to have the spam blocking on the server side. Although I now spend most of my time using ssh into my server and that way it isn't downloading all of the mail until I want to see something.
Perhaps if I combine the fact that I have SA on the server, and then if I also had a client side option, I would get everything properly blocked that way (the only reason stuff gets through my server setup right now is if the server is under a high load, then my SA script will time out and the mail gets through).
SpamNet (Score:3, Informative)
That's pretty f'n good in my book. So good, in fact, that I send all blocked messages to the "Delete" folder instead of the default "spam" folder and set outlook to permanently delet
An interesting way to deal with spam. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know if I'd want it in Python, though... it does seem to be a good deal slower already than other spam filtering methods without putting it in a scripting language. Getting it in Outlook can only be good for the net (can Bayesian be applied to things like spam from Internet virii as well?)
Re:An interesting way to deal with spam. (Score:2)
Since Feb I've had 2,215 messages and it has made only 37 mistakes. 98.32% accuracy. I've tried a few commercial products and they were lucky to approach 50% accuracy.
Re:An interesting way to deal with spam. (Score:2)
Agreed. Although, I'm a bit disappointed that many of the bayesian filter projects don't offer whitelisting in conjunction with the filters. If I'm running a business, it's really important that I allow all email from *@myclient.com, regardless of what the spam filters think about it.
I think it's
Re:An interesting way to deal with spam. (Score:2)
Functionally I believe this means that it effectively ignores the content at that point, meaning that other messages that you receive are not classified relative to these messages. I could be wrong howe
Re:An interesting way to deal with spam. (Score:2, Interesting)
What if the the filtering programs had a feature that would allow somebody to send out the "signature" of an email virus that the filter could use to block the virus before it had ever actually seen one, by adding its characteristics to the list of things that weigh heavily toward spam so it would be filtered out before ever reaching Exchange/Outlook.
Written by more than hammond (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using spambayes for months now and it really is quite amazing. Now, when I get the occasionaly spam in my mailbox it's actually interesting because I want to figure out why it made it in. The number of false positives is almost nil, and the ones that do get hit are spammy looking autogenerated reciepts from purchases I've made. It's made reading email a much more enjoyable activity.
-Adam
Re:Written by more than hammond (Score:4, Interesting)
This is quite possibly the only complaint I have about spambayes, too, and it's not even that big a deal to me. After about a month of collecting spam in its own folder (named SHIT, oddly enough), it had learned enough that I was able to dial down my SpamAssassin settings (I use an old version of SA still, too, without the bayesian stuff built in -- too lazy to switch; spambayes works well enough that it's not worth it.) I check my incoming spam folder once or twice a week now, as opposed to once or twice a day when I only ran SpamAssassin at a relatively forgiving (4.5-5.5) setting.
There are a few thousand spams in SB's crap folder now; it's gotten so good that I can't really remember the last time I've had something miscategorized as spam, and of the 50-60 spams I get per day, usually only one or two make it through to my inbox, if that. Half of the time, I don't get any at all.
If you didn't have a reason for installing a Python interpreter before, now you do.
- A.P.
Better Bayesian Filtering (Score:2, Informative)
Spam filtering is a subset of text classification, which is a well established field, but the first papers about Bayesian spam filtering per se seem to have been two given at the same c
Re:Better Bayesian Filtering (Score:4, Funny)
You've obviously never received email from an AOL user!
News for Pervs, Stuff that Matters. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
Definately Yes.
Is that a feature I can have added?
Re:News for Pervs, Stuff that Matters. (Score:2, Funny)
News for Pervs, Stuff that Splatters.
??
Eudora users... (Score:3, Informative)
Eudora 6.0 beta has spam filtering which seems to be Bayesian. It's a little slower to learn than PopFile, but it's pretty good so far, and of course integrated with the Eudora UI.
http://eudora.com/betas
Spam filtering altogether (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem in the educational market, though, is that, not being a business that can make rules and force people to live by them, educational establishments have annoyed customers (students and faculty) sometimes if any spam is blocked. (research, etc) False positives absolutely can't be tolerated. So a ranked system (spam assasian) that suggests the possibility of spam is not on the best but the only solution we have avalible. Mail will be ranked and users can make rules that trash everything but a guarenteed perfect mail, if they so desired. Or they can leave them all alone. So intelligent filtering is a necessity, not just a bennefit.
On another page, I had an odd place during this discussion of the team. I do not receive spam. (Please, don't start now). My MUOhio.edu address simply doesn't get a single piece of spam e-mail. I have had the account for two years. I have over 3000 messages in various folders. And none are spam at all. I just haven't signed up for anything with it. I put the e-mail addy on webpages too (that I author) and haven't gotten a single thing. But oh my the trash "spam" account gets 60 a day. On AOL. That blocks 80% of incoming mail. Ironically, they had MUOhio.edu blocked weeks back.
Re:Spam filtering altogether (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know spambayes, but bogofilter most definately can operating in a "ranking" mode:
Then you can header-match in your MUA all you want--or not. (I run it all through procmail, but that's because I want all the filtering done before it hits my IMAP server.)
SpamBayes (Score:2)
Mozilla Mail (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mozilla Mail (Score:3, Interesting)
Fight Spam with SpamProbe (Score:3, Informative)
I get at least 100 spam messages a day now, and I only see about a half-dozen or so. SpamProbe deals with the rest, and I don't have any problems with false positives. (SpamAssassin thinks that ads for LinuxWorld Expo are spam, but as I have it trained, SpamProbe doesn't.)
steveha
So-so article (Score:4, Insightful)
It really doesn't do much more than precis Paul Graham's arguments, then ends in a blatant plug for just one Outlook addon.
I suppose if there are still people in the column's audience who haven't heard this all before, and it gets the message out that spam can be effectively filtered, it's a minor goodness.
Remote Images in spam... (Score:3, Interesting)
Could this be the future of spam?
Does anyone know if any spam filters pick up on this patern or lack of pattern (after all there are no words in the body usually.)
Re:Remote Images in spam... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remote Images in spam... (Score:4, Informative)
Um, only read emails in plain text? Use mh.
inc; scan; show last
By the way, those images are baaaad. Usually they're something like img src="blahblah.jpg?userid=32898392" and then, when you open it, there's a log of the image with the userid 32898392 being fetched. Therefore, they know that your email address is valid. So, it's a good idea to filter out images anyway.
But, come on. Email is a medium for transmitting text. It's not supposed to have flowery backgrounds, blinking text, and embedded images. Mabey i'm a purist? But, it's another thing that use to be beautifully simple that the explosion of advertising on the internet has rendered unuseable.
Re:Remote Images in spam... (Score:3, Informative)
Outlook - turn off HTML mail (Score:2, Informative)
Place these two keys in
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10 . 0\ Outlook\Options\Mail]
"ReadAsPlain"=dword:0000000 1
OR to turn it back on and view those pretty pictures
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10. 0\ Outlook\Options\Mail]
"ReadAsPlain"=dword:0000000 0
Re:Remote Images in spam... (Score:2)
Mozilla (Score:3, Informative)
However, my life isn't totally spam free, as I find that I become neurotic about those 5% false positives that get unhelpfully moved to the spam directory, so still end up having to sift through the grot every once in a while. On the plus side, I now have a solution to my tiny cock problem, I've arranged cheaper home insurance and I have the email address of several horny co-eds who I'm assured are hungry for man juice.
Problem with this kind of filtering is.. (Score:2)
This is at best a band-aid and with the usual mistakes and slip-ups it hardly seems like a very good one. I mean if I have to sort through my junk box to check for mislabeled emails its not doing me so much of a favor.
All this talk about smart filtering and I'm starting to feel like you've missed the point, your still getting spam. Who cares if its semi-sorted.
Why stop at classifying spam? Why not all e-mail? (Score:5, Insightful)
As I wrote only late last night [against.org], using Bayesian classification with only two categories (spam and "non-spam") is somewhat short-sighted, since if properly trained, a Bayes classifier can do a much better job than ordinary mail filtering (procmail, Mozilla or Mail.app filters, you name it).
In fact, if I had to bet on the next "killer apps", mail sorting and RSS filtering based on Bayesian classification would be right at the top of my list, based solely on the actual time-saving benefits for users. And I can't see any reason for Bayesian filtering not being included in Mozilla Mail [mozilla.org] and Apple's own (revamped) Mail.app [apple.com].
I have to use Outlook at work, and after setting up Outclass [vargonsoft.com] (which requires POPfile [sourceforge.net]) with several "buckets" to classify my corporate e-mail by project and field, I'm definetly not going back. Outlook, even with extensive use of Rules Wizard and categories, simply cannot cope with the diverse kinds of project-related e-mail I swap with colleagues, and Outclass [vargonsoft.com] is the only thing I could find that could deal with Exchange, PST folders and multiple Bayesian "buckets" categories.
Come on, do the right thing and tell Apple [apple.com] and The Mozilla Project [mozilla.org] that you want configurable Bayesian filtering on their mail clients.
Not accurate enough (Score:2)
I hate spam too, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Dirty Spammer Tricks (Score:3, Informative)
I have been using the Mozilla junk mail filter for a couple of months now. One pop mail account is one that I started using in 1996. It is a spam magnet. In the time I have been using Mozilla, it has accumulated over 12,000 spam messages. That should be plenty of training for the Bayesian filter.
Mozilla's filter does a reasonably good job at catching spam, but I still get a handful of messages every day that slip through the filter. The ones that slip through seem to be messages that have intentionally munged the spammy words with spaces, numbers, and misspellings. The spammers know that people are filtering, and they are successfully getting through the filter with their dirty tricks. Another trick spammers use is to send a message with nothing but a graphic ad. The filter doesn't have enough words to judge the the spam, so the message slips through.
I also had some 'ham' messages get filtered, so I still have the annoyance of having to check the 'junk' folder periodically for wanted messages. The filtering makes life easier, but it is still not an ideal solution to the spam problem.
Re:Dirty Spammer Tricks (Score:2)
Well this is really self-defeating on their part. Sure, now they are getting their spam past your filters, but are you going to remortgage your house with a company that promises you "The best m0rtgag3 rates in the universe! Apply now for these incredib
Re:Dirty Spammer Tricks (Score:2, Insightful)
No, I don't think I'll trust you on that... :)
I have already seen the effectiveness of Popfile drop from 99% to 95% in the last 3 months.
That's very strange, but based on what you said below it seems that that's due to a limitation of Popfile as opposed to Bayesian itself. I've seen my Bayesian effectiveness INCREASE in the last 3 months.
Now spammers are including several paragraphs of unrelated (ie, un-spammy) text
Two things (Score:2)
Secondly, Microsoft is in the fray now. Bet any amount they will offer a authenticating email service that requires using Windows XP to work. It will work really well, you won't be able to communicate well with people who don't use it - standar
The spam I do see (Score:5, Interesting)
Much of the spam that gets past it is so minimalist it cannot be blocked by a Bayesian filter. I get messages like this:
It's like someone is trying to put so little in the message, that there is nothing to filter. If only they would use the stock "We are sending you this because you opted-in on it. Click on this link to remove your address." If they used that, I'll never see the message; SpamProbe will grab it. But how could I train SpamProbe to detect the minimalist ones, without blocking everything forever?
So far I don't get too many of the minimalist ones, and I just hit delete. If it becomes widespread, I'll have to start using Vipul's Razor [sourceforge.net] or something.
The other kinds of spam that get past SpamProbe are the ones that have rampant misspellings. Since none of the words are in the database, they don't match as spam terms:
I really think that I should write a filter that spell-checks an email, and rejects it if over 50% of the words with 5 or more letters are misspelled.
steveha
Soundex to work around intentional misspellings? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The spam I do see (Score:2)
>>>>>>
That would rock. If such a filter was on Slashdot, Slashdot's post volume would drop by 90%
Re:The spam I do see (Score:2)
Battle of the network Bayesian allstars (Score:4, Interesting)
1. I have a friend who uses the same kinds of words as I do and who uses Outlook (ok, an aquaintance, because friends don't let friends
2. An email virus attacks this person, snarfs up his Ham, runs a Bayesian filter on it and comes up with Spam specifically tailored for this person's aquaintances.
There's a science fiction book waiting to happen in here somewhere. If so, I own the SCOpyright on it.
What I don't like (Score:5, Interesting)
Spam is a poor use. (Score:3, Interesting)
Training something to know how likely something is to be true, that sounds too useful to waste any time with on spam at all.
Being used for spam, not invented for spam (Score:2)
They didn't have email back in the 18th century when Thomas Bayes came up with this statistical method. It is simply being applied to spam, but has been used for other more "useful" purposes [att.com] as well.
Actually, I think spam is a major problem and not a trivial application of statistics.
SpamBayes not Marc Hammond's work only (Score:5, Informative)
Mark Hammond then wrote the Outlook plugin, which, admittedly, is considerably more code than SpamBayes, but not SpamBayes itself.
For the complete background on why SpamBayes is so good at what it does, and it's history, see:
- SpamBayes Background [sourceforge.net]
Marc's is not the only application frontend for SpamBayes, here is a list of others:- SpamBayes Applications [sourceforge.net]
No apologies for this my pedantry offered.Great, but my problem is a bit more complicated .. (Score:4, Interesting)
The math (Score:2, Informative)
Why has Microsoft not done this already? (Score:2)
Re:Why has Microsoft not done this already? (Score:2)
The term "Ham" (Score:2)
Not that it matters all that much, but Hormel, who has taken use of "Spam" in pretty good graces, can't be happy about this at all. It's one thing when your product is linked to a negatively-perceived other concept, but then the further implication that Ham=good, Spam=bad... hrrm.
Re:The term "Ham" (Score:2)
Bayesian filtering (Score:2)
I also used SpamAssasin for a while, but it never seemed to do quite so well of a job. It let alot of junk get through until I set in lower, then I got some false-positives.
Usefull ??? (Score:2)
An advantage of these apps over Popfile... (Score:2)
Well... What would REALLY interest me is... (Score:4, Funny)
Hell, I'd pay MONEY for a piece of software THAT good (Hmm, clickety-click, select "nymphomanic", enter search site... Ah! This one has an oral fixation! Thank you, Mr. Bayes!).
Admit it, Slashdot. You love spam. (Score:2, Interesting)
Every spam thread is the same: I use X, and it blocks 98% of my spam, with no false positives! I use Y, and it blocks 99.9% -- take that! Here, I use Z + Y with these custom Perl scripts I wrote that interface with procmail and stop 101% percent of spam! It doesn't matter, because I never get ANY spam! Spam is only because people buy things in spam! What morons! Bow before me, for I am 1337!
Spam gives you something to fi
Check out Cloudmark's SpamNet (Score:2)
It works well. When I check my mail, I can watch the 50 or so spams I get daily pop into my inbox, and then promptly fly right back out again.
(Blatantly stolen from Spamnet's Learn More page [cloudmark.com])
When the message comes in, SpamNet generates a unique fingerprint of that message. The fingerprint is a one-way hash, or unique string of
what works well with Ximian Evolution? (Score:2)
Is there an 'integrated' solution that works within Evolution. I heard some time back they were going to do one.
They have a command line filter. May be that can be utilized?
any experiences?
thanks
LinuxLover
One of the most useful mail client features (Score:2)
- Only load images from HTML mail from addresses in your personal address book
and
- Whitelist/classify based on users in your address book.
If those two additional features and my Spambayes setup, I'd be very happy.
I use Apam Assassin with Hotmil (Score:3, Informative)
2. apt-get install spamassassin
3. apt-get install hotway
4. Add this to your
5. Switch to Kmail
6. Menu: Settings|Configure Filters
7. Add first filter.
a. Select Match Any of the following
b. Select size 250000
c. Filter action: PIPE THROUGH spamassassin
8. Add second filter
a. Select 'Match any of the following'
b. Type 'X-Spam-Flag' (no quotes)
c. Select equals. Type 'YES'
d. Filter action: Move to folder [your spam folder]
9. It's crucial thta the second filter happes after the first (use the arrows to the left).
There you have it - a spam-free Hotmail account. Not quite setup.exe, but this is Linux after all.
I must have done something wrong... (Score:4, Funny)
I DON'T LIKE SPAM! I DON'T LIKE SPAM! I DON'T LIKE SPAM!
Anyone know of a Lotus Notes filter? (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing I'm missing now is a spam classification tool like popfile for notes.
client side wastes of time (Score:2)
The more client-side filters that are in place, the more spam will increase. It's already a cat-and-mouse game between spammers and filters. In the mean time, almost 70% of existing mail traffic is UCE. Filters don't stop that at all.
You have to stop spam at the source. You have to force spammers to act responsibly and not exploit network resources without appropriate compensation. Only when this
Not it's not... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for your indictment of spam filtering providers, could you please explain where the spamassassin devteam is making money?
My choices with regards to spam at the moment are simple. Use spamassassin or something like it, or wade through spam myself. I know which I'd prefer.
Re:This is totally useless. (Score:3, Informative)
At work I have Outlook always running with the excellent bayesian FREE filter Spammunition www.upserve.com [upserve.com]. I also do check the mailbox from home over a dial-up connection.
If I wouldn't use Spammunition, then I would spend a lot of time downloading spam messages; as it is right now, I get just the ham (several messages instead of many).
Serban