How to delete spam when they are using my own address

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kea
Posts: 2
Joined: 16 Oct 2007, 12:51
Location: Sweden
Contact:

How to delete spam when they are using my own address

Post by kea »

Hi Christian,

From time to time messages from me to a mailing list are marked as spam, so I have my own address in the Whitelist. But every day I got 6-8 spam containing "We ship Worldwide", and that messages have my own address as sender (From).

I tried to use Rules like this:

Message contains "We ship Worldwide"
-> MarkForDelete

and also like this

Message contains "We ship Worldwide" AND From contains "myusername@mydomain.net"
-> MarkForDelete

but as long as my address exists in the Whitelist, the message won't be marked.

Is there a possibility to use Rules only, something like this:

Subject contains "SPAM" AND From contains "myusername@mydomain.net"
-> Do nothing

Message contains "We ship Worldwide" AND From contains "myusername@mydomain.net"
-> MarkForDelete

and then exclude my own address from the Whitelist?
Cadillakin
Posts: 8
Joined: 09 Nov 2008, 17:41

Post by Cadillakin »

Hi kea

First thing... Whitelisting basically ignores spam processing. I'm not the expert here, Christian is.. but IMO, you won't get to first base if you try and workaround the white list. You can't. If the email address or domain is there, the mail will not be processed.

Anything can be filtered with Popman if you just concentrate on what you want and what you don't want. You can use "From contains". You can use "From not contains". You can use them BOTH in the same filter.

You can use OR in combination with AND. Message contains this, OR from contains that, OR Header not contains that. You can use OR a thousand times in one filter.

Here is one of my larger filters to give you an idea of what can be done.. I'm trying to catch mail that has two separate indications that it is spam. I do that by using OR OR OR.. and then combining it with BADWORDS AND GOODWORDS processing. If but one of the OR strings matches and it has any of the BADWORDS in my list and none of my GOODWORDS, its deleted.

SUBJECT is empty OR HEADER contains any of {"xxxxxxxxx", "xxxxxxxxx", "xxxxxxxxx", "xxxxxxxx"} OR To contains none of EMAILADD OR Subject+Message contains any of INVITES AND Subject+Message contains any of BADWORDS AND Subject+Message+From+CC contains none of GOODWORDS -> PlaySound("C:\Internet\PopMan\Sounds\blockurl.wav"), Delete

In the filter above, I have previously made a list of my email addresses.. (a list fashioned like the goodwords and badwords list that Christian includes in his examples) so, when the filter says "TO contains none of EMAILADD", I am not the primary recipient, or its a list, or its bulk. Also, I made a list of invite words, ("join", "invit", etc..). You can fashion your own lists to suit yourself. And so on.. You can basically make lists till the end of time to suit your own purpose and include them in your filtering rules.

Good luck and best wishes.
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Christian
Site Admin
Posts: 387
Joined: 11 Jan 2004, 13:04
Location: Magdeburg, Germany
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Post by Christian »

Hi kea,

the answer to your problem is to remove your email address from the white list, because otherwise (spam) mails from that address will never be deleted or marked for delete by any rule. You then have to add an extra And condition to every Spam marker/deleter rule
to protect (white list) your email address, except for the special "We ship Worldwide" spam rule. That means your rules will look like this:

Code: Select all

Subject contains "SPAM" 
AND 
From NOT contains "myusername@mydomain.net"
-> MarkForDelete 

Message contains "We ship Worldwide" 
-> MarkForDelete 
Regarding the rule example of Cadillakin, you must know that the rule system in PopMan evaluates Or expressions before And expressions. That means the following equations hold (A, B and C are atomic conditions here):

A or B and C = (A or B) and C
A and B or C = A and (B or C)

Therefore the example reads like this:

Code: Select all

          SUBJECT is empty 
     OR 
          HEADER contains any of {"xxxxxxxxx", "xxxxxxxxx", "xxxxxxxxx", "xxxxxxxx"} 
     OR 
          To contains none of EMAILADD 
     OR 
          Subject+Message contains any of INVITES 
AND
      Subject+Message contains any of BADWORDS 
AND
      Subject+Message+From+CC contains none of GOODWORDS 
-> 
PlaySound("C:\Internet\PopMan\Sounds\blockurl.wav"), Delete
That means the rule consists of 3 main conditions that all must evaluate to true. The first main condition is true if at least one of the 4 sub conditions is evaluated to true.
Christian Hübner
Sammo
Posts: 2
Joined: 22 Mar 2009, 01:15
Location: Oregon

SpamPal

Post by Sammo »

The easiest and most effective way I have found for PopMan to kill spam was to install and setup SpamPal - http://www.spampal.org

It's free, doesn't take up too many resources, and is highly configurable. Just setup PopMan to delete messages flagged as spam by SpamPal.
Cadillakin
Posts: 8
Joined: 09 Nov 2008, 17:41

Re: SpamPal

Post by Cadillakin »

Sammo wrote:The easiest and most effective way I have found for PopMan to kill spam was to install and setup SpamPal - http://www.spampal.org

It's free, doesn't take up too many resources, and is highly configurable. Just setup PopMan to delete messages flagged as spam by SpamPal.
Easy, perhaps. But insofar as effectiveness, Christian's implementation of filtering is nearly airtight.

If you write me just one email that leads me to believe you're a purveyor of junk.. you're not going to get into my mailbox again. Period. It was a little daunting at first to learn how to write the rules, but once a few principles are learned, it's a breeze..

Speaking for myself, I'd much rather have filtering based on my needs and my spam, then filtering based on a larger population. Same with ad filtering in my browser.. I don't need an additional program and a list blocking websites or ads that I'll never go to or encounter - My preference is to use minimal resources in all aspects of computing and websurfing and filter only what I need to filter.. not what Joe College needs while browsing mp3 sites all over the world...

On the other hand, if you find Popman's blacklist and whitelist not adequate for your filtering and you don't have the inclination or ability to write the rules, then YES, by all mean, get a supplementary list and program to use alongside Popman. But I don't want those who are visiting here to think they can't write totally effective rules with Popman, because they can!
Sammo
Posts: 2
Joined: 22 Mar 2009, 01:15
Location: Oregon

Post by Sammo »

Before dismissing SpamPal you should look at what it can actually do, including DNSBL's and the addition of plugins (http://www.spampal.org/plugins.html). Once setup it is far more powerful and flexable than just using the PopMan filters.
Cadillakin
Posts: 8
Joined: 09 Nov 2008, 17:41

Post by Cadillakin »

Sammo wrote:Before dismissing SpamPal you should look at what it can actually do, including DNSBL's and the addition of plugins (http://www.spampal.org/plugins.html). Once setup it is far more powerful and flexable than just using the PopMan filters.
In the past, I looked at all the email apps and notifiers. I looked at Spam Pal, Spam Assassin... nearly everything that filtered mail.. I used MMM for years until development stopped and it's SSL plugins became dated. Afterwards, I used PopTray until it's SSL implementation failed.. Then, I looked some more until I found Popman.. I'm satisfied this is the best notify and spam filtering application on the web...

Why would I need two applications to filter mail when one small application does EVERYTHING I need? In that regard, I'd be interested to know what you think SpamPal and it's various plugins can do that I can't do with Popman's filtering?

In a few seconds I can write an effective rule in Popman that does complete filtering on the headers and message body with regular expressions or lists, AND I can filter any IP address, netrange, domain, or website as I laid out in another thread.

Does that not cover the whole range of filtering possibilities? Is there something I missed?
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