Jason Silver

Saturday, March 27th, 2004

So Tired of SPAM- Spambayes to the Rescue!

I finally gave in today and decided to snoop around for plugins for Outlook/Outlook Express which would handle spam for me. I've been using Outlook Express Inbox Assistant to handle spam fairly successfully for the last five years or so, but it's just getting harder all the time. With probably 500 messages a day, 460 which are spam, I need more efficiency! You're gonna love what I found! It's a free, open source (I think) software program called Spambayes. It's not really easy to set up if you use Outlook Express, as you need to feel comfortable forwarding ports and mail servers through Spambayes. Outlook is a cynch though. But if you can patiently work your way through it, I think you'll be pleasantly suprised! What it does is analyze everything about the email-- all the content including body and headers, and establishes a probability based on past email you've received. It decides the likelyhood of your email being spam, or (the opposite,) ham. You can even show it folders of saved emails to teach it the about the type of email you like. In the beginning you need to patiently direct it-- teaching it right from wrong, and it learns based on what email you want to get. Neat eh? So if this doesn't help me deal with spam, then nothing will. After it's taught nicely, I'll disable the bizzilion filters and conditions Outlook Express is using to sort my mail. Spambaye to the Rescue! Goodbye spam, ~Jason
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