This page gives instructions
on installing and setting-up SpamPal for use with the e-mail client
program,
Outlook Express
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1. Install
SpamPal
2. Configure
SpamPal
3. Configure your email program
3.1 Change your POP3 settings
3.2 Change your IMAP4 Settings
3.3 Change your SMTP settings
3.4 Create Filter/Message rules
4. Email
Virus Scanners and Firewalls
5. Whitelist
friends and contacts
5.1 Export your contacts email addresses
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Start installation by double-clicking on the SpamPal
Setup program (spampal.exe) and follow
the on-screen instructions. Upon completion, SpamPal will run, showing
its pink umbrella icon in your system tray.
If this installation is an upgrade of SpamPal
then the existing configuration of Outlook Express is retained and
the process is now complete. If not, i.e. this is a new installation
of SpamPal, proceed with the steps below.
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| All you need to
know about extra configuration can be found here |
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SpamPal can either be configured
to run in transparent
or non-transparent
mode.
a) In non-transparent
mode, the user has to reconfigure
their email program to use it. This can sometimes cause problems
for people, as changes have to be made to Username, Server Name
and sometimes even port numbers, in order to get SpamPal to filter
their email. So before
you make any changes, take a note
of your user id
and pop3 server name
b) In transparent mode, the user
doesn't have to reconfigure their email program to use it (apart
from a simple message rule).
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If you installed SpamPal
in transparent mode then you can
skip the next section(s) and jump straight to the Create
Filter/Message rules section of this manual, which will tell you
how to setup a message rule to move the spam that SpamPal has detected,
away from your inbox and into the a SPAMTRAP folder.
If you installed SpamPal in non-transparent
mode then you have manually set
up your email program to fetch your mail through the SpamPal proxy
rather than directly from your ISP.
You need to know how you collect mail from your ISP, for example,
if you use POP3 to collect your
mail then your only need to change your POP3
settings and not the IMAP4 ones. |
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| Load Outlook Express,
then select Accounts from the Tools
menu, and select the Mail tab to see the
available accounts, e.g.: |
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| We'll start with the first
account (most people will only have one). Select it and then click
Properties. Go to the Servers
tab of the window that comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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Screen before
changes:
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To reconfigure your email program,
first make a careful note of your original settings.
You should append whatever
value you currently have in your
Incoming (POP3) Server setting, to whatever
you currently have in the Username
field (seperated
with a @ sign), and change the Incoming
(POP3) Server setting to 127.0.0.1.
e.g. if your original values
were:
Incoming (POP3) Server: your.mailserver.com
Username: fred.bloggs
then you would, for example, change them
to:
Incoming (POP3) Server: 127.0.0.1
Username: fred.bloggs@your.mailserver.com
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Screen after
changes:
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| continue
regardless; SpamPal copes with usernames that contain two @s
without difficulty. |
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You
may, at this point, get an error message about SpamPal not being
able to listen on the standard POP3 port.This is nothing to
be worried about; just write down the port number SpamPal tells
you and continue with this guide
This message means SpamPal is using Port 1110
instead of 110.
You don't have to put it into SpamPal because SpamPal already
knows it is using port 110.
Instead, you have to tell your email program (for example Outlook
Express) to use port 1110
instead of 110.
To do this, first install SpamPal. Then set up OE, exactly as
given in the instructions. In addition, if you go to Tools,
Accounts,
Properties
and click on the Advanced
tab, you will see that you
have a box labelled Incoming
Mail (POP3) which currently
says 110.
You need to change this to 1110.
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Click the Settings...
button beside it. Now, select Log
on using and enter your
original username
and password i.e.. What
they were before you modified the username to install SpamPal
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| Amend
the port number to the server name in the login name field using
a colon. For example, if BlueYonder ran their POP3 server on
port 8090, I'd end up with a login name of jf004d7582@pop3.blueyonder.co.uk:8090
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| Don't
worry; just add @localhost to the username and leave the server
name as is |
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| Incoming
Mail (POP3):mail.btopenworld.com |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username:
fred.bloggs |
Username:
fred.bloggs@mail.btopenworld.com |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3): pop.west.cox.net |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username:
johnsmith |
Username:johnsmith@pop.west.cox.net |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3): pop.telus.net |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username:
fax07734 |
fax07734@pop.telus.net |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3):
192.168.1.1 |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username:
mary_jones |
Username:
mary_jones@192.168.1.1 |
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The
above Incoming POP3
Server Name, can be called:
Incoming Mail Server,
POP3 server, POP3 Username or Account Name depending on your
email program.
There are also two ways of specifying the local
server name, which should mean exactly the same thing (but on
some system only one of them will work): localhost
or 127.0.0.1 |
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Now click OK
to confirm, and repeat this for all the remaining accounts. When
you're done, close the Accounts window.
Now try to check your mail; if you don't get any
errors, continue to the next step. You may be asked to re-enter
your POP3 passwords; this is nothing to worry about. If you get
an error from Outlook Express, check that you've configured the
incoming POP3 server to 127.0.0.1
and, if necessary, that the port has been set right. If
you get an error from SpamPal, check you've added the servername
to the username correctly, and
that your Internet connection is active.
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| If there is a need to change you POP3,
SMTP or IMAP
ports, then start with the first account (most people will only have
one). Select it and then click Properties.
Go to the Advanced tab of the window that
comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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| The
default Server Timouts
of 1 minute can be a little too small an amout when using
SpamPal. If you are finding your email is timing out then
perhaps increase this figure to 4
minutes. |
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| If you are still having a problem
with your username, why not give this simple setup
page a try |
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a) Many connection
problems are caused because of firewalls. If you are using
ZoneAlarm, it will pop up a box asking if SpamPal is to be
allowed to access the Internet. You must answer yes
to this, otherwise SpamPal cannot connect to your mailbox.
b) Many POP3 connection
problems are caused because SpamPal is not running on Port
110. Did you get
an error message at any point telling you that port 110
was in use? To check to see which ports SpamPal is using,
right click on the umbrella icon in the tray to bring up SpamPal's
Options window, click
on connections, and
confirm that the port number for the POP3 protocol is 110
c) Another common
problem is that the POP3 port is running in the wrong mode.
SpamPal can run in Any servername
mode which is the recommended configuration, and Specific
Server mode which is only used for special cases. The
line in your connections config should read: 110
POP3 (any servername) If you do not have a line exactly
like that, please click on the 110,
click on the properties
button, and change the setting to: POP3
(Any Servername).
d) When you try to
connect to collect your mail, does SpamPal show any sign of
activity? The umbrella icon in the tray shows an animation
of it spinning when SpamPal is active. Also, if you keep the
SpamPal status window open, you should see commands coming
into the Active Connections window when SpamPal is active.
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| Load Outlook Express, then select
Accounts from the Tools
menu, and select the Mail tab to see the
available accounts, e.g.: |
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| We'll start with the first account
(most people will only have one). Select it and then click Properties.
Go to the Servers tab of the window that
comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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You'll need to make changes to the
Incoming Mail (IMAP) and Account
Name fields.
Write down the name of your IMAP Server in the IMAP Server box (e.g..imap.yourisp.com)
and then replace this with 127.0.0.1
Now add an @ symbol and the IMAP
Server name that you wrote down earlier, to the Username logon box
(e.g.. my_login_name@imap.yourisp.com)
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Now click OK
to confirm, and repeat this for all the remaining accounts. When
you're done, close the Accounts window.
Now try to check your mail; if you don't get any
errors, continue to the next step. You may be asked to re-enter
your IMAP passwords; this is nothing to worry about. If you get
an error from Outlook Express, check that you've configured the
incoming IMAP server to 127.0.0.1
and, if necessary, that the port has been set right. If you get
an error from SpamPal, check you've added the servername to the
username correctly, and that your Internet connection is active.
When you check your mail, you should also notice that you only get
non-spam email in your inbox,
as the spam marked message are now in a new folder called spamtrap,
which is created by SpamPal (only
when using the above IMAP settings) to store all your spam
marked messages:
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| If you wish to use SpamPal's
SMTP Proxy to auto-whitelist any email addresses that you send to,
you will need to change Outlook Express's SMTP settings, as follows |
| Start with the first account
(most people will only have one). Select it and then click Properties.
Go to the Servers tab of the window that
comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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Now, take a note of your
current Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server,
for example: smtp.myisp.co.uk
Now change the current Outgoing Mail (SMTP)
Server, to: 127.0.0.1
Now go to SpamPal's Connections
page: |
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Now click on Add port and change
the Port Type to SMTP
Now, change the Server Name to
the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
name, you noted down earlier,
e.g..smtp.myisp.co.uk
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| Now, whenever you send
an email, SpamPal will automatically auto-whitelist it |
Occasionally, a spammer might
forge the email address of someone who is in your auto-whitelist
- for example, a colleague or an alternate email address or
yours. While you don't want to put this person in your blacklist
because they send you lots of genuine email, you don't want
them to end up in your auto-whitelist and bypass SpamPal's
spam-checking features.
Clicking on the Exclusions
pane will bring up a window into which you can enter the email
addresses of people who should never be added to the auto-whitelist.
Just add your colleagues here and you won't have to worry
about spammers forging their addresses to bypass SpamPal's
filtering. You can even add your entire employer's domain
- e.g. *@acme-widgets.com |
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If you are are using an IMAP4
server, you will not need
to setup a filter/message rule on your email program,
as SpamPal moves any spam tagged messages automatically into a folder
called inbox.spamtrap
on your
server.
If you are are using a POP3
server and want your email program to automatically filter the SpamPal-marked
messages into a separate Mailbox, so that you can more easily review
them, continue as follows |
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Assuming you've already
got a folder setup in Outlook Express for example, called spam,
then:
Go to Message Rules
in the Tools menu, and
select Mail; this will bring up a list
of all of the filters (or as Outlook Express calls them, rules)
that are current set up. Click New to
create a new one.
Normally we'd make a filter to transfer everything
containing SpamPal's special header into a spam folder. However,
since Outlook Express doesn't allow such advanced filters, we'll
have to create a rule to detect anything with **SPAM**
in the subject line. SpamPal will add this to any messages it thinks
are spam; however, you'll have to be careful you don't change this
to something else using SpamPal's Options dialog.
Firstly, select to filter when
the subject line contains specific words, and an action move
it to a specified folder. Now click the blue contains
specified words in the box at the bottom; type **SPAM**
(without the quotes) into the field at the top of the window that
appears, and click Add to add it to
the list.
Click OK to leave that, then click the
blue specified folder and click
New Folder to create a new folder called
Spam Trap (or whatever).
Your rule description should now be:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
Where the Subject line contains
'**SPAM**'
Move it to the Spam Trap folder
And Stop processing more rules
So, you should end up with a rule looking a bit like this:
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| Make
sure your new rule for SpamPal is first
in the list, if you have a lot of other message rules you use
and als make your SpamPal rule end with And
Stop processing more rules |
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you have a lot of blocked senders then it is worth Removing
them from the list, as SpamPal
will do a much better job of coping with Spam and removing the
blocked senders will also speed up the processing of email. |
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Specific instructions for using a variety of email
virus scanners with SpamPal can be found on the main
installation page
Some email virus filters want to sit between your
mail program and your mail server in just the way that SpamPal does.
There's actually no reason why they can't; you just have them up
in serial so that your virus filter fetches its mail through SpamPal
rather than directly from your mailserver, and then your email program
fetches the mail through the virus filter.
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In order to speed up the processing of your emails
and to prevent SpamPal from marking your friends or contact's emails
as spam, it's a good idea at this point to whitelist all your important
email addresses.
This can be done in four ways:
a) Use the pop3
automatic whitelist: this will whitelist non-spam
email's that you receive on a frequent basis
b) Use the smtp
automatic whitelist: which (if setup in 3.3)
will whitelist all email addresses that you send out
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| If
you are using this, especially in a business, as this is recording
all outgoing addresses, some people might view this as an infringement
upon their privacy, (if you are in UK you need to tell staff
of this policy before you start collecting data) |
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c) use
the Add to Whitelist option on
SpamPal's system tray: to manually
whitelist your email addresses by typing in an address (or by using
the dropdown box; to select from a list of recently received address):
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| d) You
can use this procedure to automatically
export your Outlook Express contacts or you can use SpamPal's Whitelist
Email Addresses page, to manually
whitelist your email addresses: |
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The
whitelist function only looks for email addresses in certain
headers of your email.
These headers are currently: From:,
Reply-To:,
Sender:, Mailing-List:
and Return-Path: |
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Initially, you will notice that using SpamPal
makes fetching your email a little slower. This is because SpamPal
has to check everything against the DNSBL lists (Public Blacklists)
to see what email's are from a spammer and which aren't.
However, through it's Auto-Whitelist feature(s),
SpamPal will quickly learn about the people and machines that send
you lots of email, and adds them to a list of trusted senders. Because
they're trusted, SpamPal doesn't waste time any checking the DNSBL
lists (Public Blacklists) for them and so the more you use SpamPal,
the quicker it will get.
There are more hints and tip on how to optimise SpamPal here
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| You can use
this procedure to automatically
export your Outlook Express email addresses, so that you can quickly
whitelist your contacts which will speed up the processing of your
emails and to prevent SpamPal from marking your friends or contact's
emails as spam. |
| This completes the installation and
setup. |
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