{"id":51,"date":"2003-07-05T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2003-07-05T17:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=51"},"modified":"2003-07-05T12:14:00","modified_gmt":"2003-07-05T17:14:00","slug":"slamming_spammi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/07\/05\/slamming_spammi.html","title":{"rendered":"Slamming spamming"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been using POPFile <\/a>for almost a month now, and am very pleased with it. It’s an open-source message proxy that intercepts all the POP3 e-mail coming into any accounts I have and searches it for spam.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the way it does this is simply by associating content words with either being spam or something else (you can create as many categories as you want, but I just do that sort of binary filtering). Not phrases — just words. (Yeah, I thought it was goofy, too, but, damn, it works.)<\/p>\n

Though you can force it to classify certain things as spam (by mailing address or parts thereof, or subject line words), I’ve found I haven’t needed to. Simply by providing feedback over time (“No, this <\/i>is spam, and this <\/i>is okay”) I’m presently at >95% accuracy (mostly false negatives about mail being spam) over the course of 1,100 messages during the month (i.e., including that learning period). That’s surprising and gratifyingly high. <\/p>\n

Looking at the stats, I can also see that about 16% of the mail I get here at home (vs. work) is spam. <\/p>\n

Since POPFile is a mail proxy, it’s usable with any POP3 client. It can be set to either modify x-header information or subject lines, so that your mail client can then push the spam (or other classification) into the folder you like. I still review what gets classified as spam (and vice-versa), at my leisure, but it’s trivial to do. <\/p>\n

(I do still use SpamAssassin through my host, but that usually just confirms POPFile’s judgments — it always targets the messages that SA identifies, but usually finds even more.)<\/p>\n

As an open source product, it’s free (donations are accepted), and continues to be improved and upgraded. If you’re looking for a relatively simple and quite reliable anti-spam product, and are willing to invest the initial training time, POPFile is definitely worth looking at.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been using POPFile for almost a month now, and am very pleased with it. It’s an open-source message proxy that intercepts all the POP3 e-mail coming into any accounts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2744,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/27\/spam_spam_spam.html","url_meta":{"origin":51,"position":0},"title":"Spam, spam, spam, spam …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 27-Sep-02 9:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's backlog of favorite subject lines: My dear dave.hill -- My dear scuz.ball. Urgent: Ambitious People Targets! -- Your marketing strategy? And quoth the bottom of another unsolicited e-mail ......","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":68,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/07\/02\/spam_spam_spam.html","url_meta":{"origin":51,"position":1},"title":"Spam, spam, spam, spam …","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 2-Jul-03 7:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"E-mail accumulating in my inbox from Thursday p.m. to Wednesday a.m.? 240 pieces. E-mail left there after I ran my iHateSpam filter? 76. Two false positives. One false negative. Yeesh....","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1867,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/16\/if_only_they_wo.html","url_meta":{"origin":51,"position":2},"title":"If only they would use their genius in the service of Niceness …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 16-Apr-02 3:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I get spam. Lots of spam. All sorts -- virility enhancers, naughty picture sites, stock suggestions, alternative drugs ... you name it, somebody wants to sell it to me. I...","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3594,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/10\/21\/competition_by.html","url_meta":{"origin":51,"position":3},"title":"Competition by any other name","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 21-Oct-02 9:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Direct Marketing Association has long opposed anti-spam laws. After all, their members make a living through direct marketing ... i.e., spam. Problem is, \"big fleas have lesser fleas,\" and...","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10077,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/08\/e_mail_spam.html","url_meta":{"origin":51,"position":4},"title":"E-mail spam","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 8-Sep-06 12:39pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I seem to have an actual working solution with spam here on my account. I get about 100+ pieces a day coming in, but I have to intervene with it...","rel":"","context":"In "My Computer"","block_context":{"text":"My Computer","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/my-computer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7420,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/03\/10\/anti_spam.html","url_meta":{"origin":51,"position":5},"title":"Anti-spam","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 10-Mar-05 6:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"Jay Allen lists some new anti-comment\/trackback spam tools available for MT3, working in conjunction with (or even overlapping with) his own MT-Blacklist. MT-Moderate, by Chad Everett, catches comments and trackbacks...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}