[Editor's note: I can't say I've tried this one yet, but I hope to shortly. This looks like an easy to follow recipe for getting your own personal spam filter up and running.]
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In response to a thread in one of the Apple fora, I've made a quick web page that tells in simple language how to use fetchmail to pull down your email so you can filter it with procmail, but still read it with the Mail application. This lets you use procmail's incredibly powerful filtering capabilities even if you aren't running a mail server. It will even work well with a dialup account.
[Editor's note: I can't say I've tried this one yet, but I hope to shortly. This looks like an easy to follow recipe for getting your own personal spam filter up and running.]
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OK nice Idea
Can someone that understands *nix please translate this for me so I can try it? I would love to just bounce emails back that I know are spam without having to even click on them.
OK nice Idea
Hi, I thought that osx mail has that bounce to sender feature.
OK nice Idea
The basic idea is that the fetchmail program will connect to your mailserver and download your mail, then hand it all off to the procmail program. procmail will then take each message and check its headers and contents against a set of rules you set up and then ultimately dispose of each message according to the rules. If you want a great procmail-based utility to do this sort of thing, check out Catherine Hampton's SpamBouncer, at www.spambouncer.org and enjoy.
OK nice Idea
Thanks ill go check that site right quick.
Impractical
This tip is totally impractical since you have to rebuild your email box every time you read mail. It takes quite a while to rebuild my mailbox. And mail.app will no longer automatically put up the little red dot to alert you to incoming mail.Of course you could use PINE or some command line mail program, but that would be a huge step in the wrong direction.
Not a security risk
Procmail is not a "local mail system". It doesn't introduce any new security risks. It's syntax is bizarre and idiosyncratic, however, so using it's more advanced features is not for the faint of heart.
procmail is not a security risk
Chas, procmail is a local delivery agent (LDA), it cannot send email and it cannot receive it either, all it can do is deliver it. It does not listen on any port for network connections. It cannot act as an open mail relay.
is it really necessary?
what is wrong with setting up a rule in mail.app to send all messages that aren't either to or cc to your e-mail address to the trash? if you can pre-filter all of the mailing lists you know about, it's pretty effective against spam.
is it really necessary?
Not sure if it's really necessary, but unfortunately, the filters in mail.app (as far as i can tell, and i've been running OS X for only a week) can't handle compound statements like if to or cc isn't address1 OR address2. So people with multiple accounts can't easily filter out spam that way...
is it really necessary?
I agree - the lack of an OR operation makes the Mail Rules primitive at best. What I'd also like to see is the ability to filter on Attachment content. Just to be able to bounce anything with a .pif attachment would be very handy at the moment.
polling multiple pop accts???
does one simply repeat the poll line for each of a series of multiple accounts? or is it more complicated than that?
is it really necessary?
what is wrong with setting up a rule in mail.app to send all messages that aren't either to or cc to your e-mail address to the trash?
Nothing, as long as you never want to receive an email that someone Bcc:ed to you. That's a bit draconian.
Refreshing is easier than I thought
Since I wrote this I've found that it is not necessary to rebuild mailboxes in order to see the new mail. You can quit & re-launch mail.app, or you can simply click on each of your mailboxes in succession. The web page has been updated to reflect this.
OK, but the wrong destination...?
Fetchmail and procmail are definitely the right way to go, IMHO. But I think we're only doing half the job here, and confusing Mail.app.
Not Impractical
I withdraw my previous remark about this being impractical. I came upon this tip during a search, months after I made my original remarks. Apparently "Anonymous" rewrote his page with a couple of hints from the feedback, you no longer have to rebuild your Mail.app mailbox to pick up mail, it now allows Mail.app to automatically pick up the mail from the regular unix mailboxes. I believe this might have been an improvement in Mail.app, it can now draw mail from the same standard Unix mailbox structure that native Unix apps like PINE use.
Spam filter for NON-beginners
I posted this hint for people with little or no experience.... or for power-users to help Mail users who have little experience.
If you want a comprehensive spam solution go to: http://ceicher.homeunix.com/mt-static/docs/FreeSpamFilteringForMacOSX.html These instructions are easier than they look and, man, they WORK! Bye bye spam. I'm reluctant to install this for others because I won't be around to troubleshoot. That's why I looked for a simple solution. |
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