SpamPal Manual: Configuring

SpamPal is very configurable but the default settings should suit most user's needs. If however you need to change the default settings, you can tune SpamPal using the Options panel, in many different ways.

2.1. Connections: Main Pane
2.2. Connections: Port Properties: POP3 Proxy Setup (transparent)
2.3. Connections: Port Properties: POP3 Proxy Setup (multiple servernames)
2.4. Connections: Port Properties: POP3 Proxy Setup (specific servername)
2.5. Connections: Port Properties: IMAP4 Proxy Setup (transparent)
2.6. Connections: Port Properties: IMAP4 Proxy Setup (multiple servernames)
2.7. Connections: Port Properties: IMAP4 Proxy Setup (specific servername)
2.8. Connections: Port Properties: SMTP Proxy Setup (transparent auto whitelisting)
2.9. Connections: Port Properties: SMTP Proxy Setup (non-transparent auto whitelisting)

2.1 Connections: Main Pane

This pane allows you to control the port(s) your email program uses to communicate with SpamPal. You can normally leave these port numbers, on the values set by SpamPal and not worry about it too much.

The default enabled Ports are 110 (POP3), 143 (IMAP4). You may also see Port 25 (SMTP).

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In most cases, you will be using SpamPal's POP3 Proxy, when setting up SpamPal.

One of the main problems with SpamPal is that the user has to reconfigure their mail client to use it. This often causes problems. With the transparent proxy, you no longer have to change your mail program's settings - just install SpamPal and it'll filter your mail automatically!

Before you can do this however, you'll need to tell SpamPal that you want to use the transparent proxy.

From the main Connections screen (see above), click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to
modify the settings)

In the Settings tab screen, which is currently set to a Protocol of POP3 and a Proxy Type of Transparent, you can see that the only setting you may wish to modify is the Local Port Number. The main reason for wanting to change from the default pop3 port of 110, is if there is a conflict with another program, such as an anti-virus scanner (see this page for more details on how to find conflicts):

Note 1: Administrator Rights...

You will need administration rights to perform the initial installation/initialization of the transparent proxy - although admin rights aren't required to actually use it. If you currently don't have administration rights on your system and
you try to add a transparent proxy, you will see the following error message:

In the Options Tab screen below, you will find various options to change the way the pop3 connection operates:

For message previews; There isn't much point filtering the entirity of large messages, when you email program is only asking to look the headers of you email. This allows you to specify how much of the message body should be filtered by a plugin like RegExFilter or HtmlModify. Lower values will make SpamPal operate quicker, but at the expense of slightly less accuracy.

For full message; There isn't much point filtering the entirity of large messages, so this allows you to specify how much of the message body should be filtered by a plugin like RegExFilter or HtmlModify. Lower values will make SpamPal operate quicker, but at the expense of slightly less accuracy.

Padding method:

Example: Add spaces to existing header

7-Zip 4.26 beta was released.

Example: Add X-Padding: headers at bottom

To: 7-Zip@topica.com
From: Igor Pavlov <list@7-zip.org>
Subject: 7-Zip News: 7-Zip 4.26 beta
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 06:39:43 +0000
Message-ID: <558082306-1463792638-1123224021@boing.topica.com>
X-HTMLM-Score: 0
X-SpamPal: PASS WLIST EMAIL
X-Wlist-Pattern: list@7-zip.org
X-Padding: pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp
pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

7-Zip 4.26 beta was released.

Example: Add X-Padding: headers at top

X-Padding: pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp
pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp
To: 7-Zip@topica.com
From: Igor Pavlov <list@7-zip.org>
Subject: 7-Zip News: 7-Zip 4.26 beta
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 06:39:43 +0000
Message-ID: <558082306-1463792638-1123224021@boing.topica.com>
X-HTMLM-Score: 0
X-SpamPal: PASS WLIST EMAIL
X-Wlist-Pattern: list@7-zip.org

7-Zip 4.26 beta was released.

Warn user if message larger then reported size: When a plugin process an email, it tells SpamPal how big the email is, once it's processed it. Once the whole message has been processed, SpamPal checks this size and will warn you, if the email fully received, was larger than it should have been. This normally shouldn't happen but if it does, report the error in the SpamPal forum.

Prefetch messages to improve performance: Having this option enabled means that SpamPal will try to improve it's performance by pre-fetching headers and full messages in a wider range of circumstances. This alllows DNSBL queries to be made earlier. so there's more chance of them being already completed when their results are needed, rather than you having to wait for them.

Send X-SpamPal-Timeout: headers to prevent mail client from timing out: The X-SpamPal-Timeout: Prevent header is sent to your email program by SpamPal, while it does searches by the DNSBLs and your plugins, to prevent your email program from timing out.

You can fine-tune the operation of the SpamPal transparent proxy from the 'control' tab of the port properties dialog:

By default the transparent proxy ports are configured to only filter outgoing connections - ie connections made by something running on your machine.

If you are running a mailserver on your machine, you may wish to activate the option to filter incoming connections to your server. You can also set the port to only filter connections to/from specific I.P. address, netblocks or mailservers.

From the Control tab, you can also choose to filter incoming connections (disabled by default; you'd want to enable this if you're running a mailserver, for example), and even choose which connections you'd like SpamPal to filter, and which you wouldn't.

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In most cases, you will be using SpamPal's POP3 Proxy, when setting up SpamPal.

From the main Connections screen (see above), click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to
modify the settings)

In the Settings tab screen, which is currently set to a Protocol of POP3 and a Proxy Type of Multiple servernames, you can see that the only setting you may wish to modify is the Local Port Number. The main reason for wanting to change from the default pop3 port of 110, is if there is a conflict with another program, such as an anti-virus scanner (see this page for more details on how to find conflicts):

In the Options Tab screen below, you will find various options to change the way the pop3 connection operates:

Suppress Connection error messages in Client; If your email program is set to check for mail automatically, after installing SpamPal, it may give you errors after you go offline. If you enable this option, you can suppress the error messages.

Don't report networking error messages; If you enable this option, you can suppress any error messages from SpamPal it may give you, for example, if your system goes offline or your Internet Provider's server has a problem.

Attempt APOP authenification; If your Internet Provider requires you to use APOP (Authenticated POP), a more secure method of sending your password to the server, then select this option in SpamPal and deselect any corresponding APOP option within your email program.

Padding method:

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If you need to use Secure Password Authentication, SASL or APOP authentication, you cannot use the POP3 (any username) option, Instead, you have to use the POP3 (specific servername) option.

Ie. you have to tell SpamPal directly what POP3 server is it to use.

From the main Connections screen, click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to modify the settings).

In the Settings tab screen, which is currently set to a Protocol of POP3 and a Proxy Type of
Specific servername, you can see that the only setting you may wish to modify is the Local Port Number. The main reason for wanting to change from the default pop3 port of 110, is if there is a conflict with another program, such as an anti-virus scanner (see this page for more details on how to find conflicts):

In this method of specifying server names, every server must have a different port number. The default port number for POP3 is 110, but obviously only one server will be able to use this, so if you have more than one mailserver give them different port numbers. Almost any number about 1024 and about 10000 should be okay.

On this screen, you also enter the Server name (usually of your ISP) that you are going to use.

Note 1: The Subject line doesn't contain **SPAM* but the X-SpamPal header shows it's spam

The defaults for Message Preview is 4K and the Full Message: 64K

Try setting both values to the same thing, e.g. 64K, and see if that cures the problem.

Pad message headers so message matches reported size: Disabling this option tells SpamPal not to change the size of a mail message after it's been scanned. The reason SpamPal normally pads out an email, is that when an email client ask SpamPal how big an email is, it doesn't actually know, until it's finished being scanned (ie. SpamPal had added it's X-SpamPal header) so an "educated" guess is made.

Once SpamPal does know the size, the email is padded, in order to match the "educated" guess. Normally, you should leave this option enabled as some email program may not work correctly..

Warn user if message larger then reported size: When a plugin process an email, it tells SpamPal how big the email is, once it's processed it. Once the whole message has been processed, SpamPal checks this size and will warn you, if the email fully received, was larger than it should have been. This normally shouldn't happen but if it does, report the error in the SpamPal forum.

Prefetch messages to improve performance: Having this option enabled means that SpamPal will try to improve it's performance by pre-fetching headers and full messages in a wider range of circumstances. This alllows DNSBL queries to be made earlier. so there's more chance of them being already completed when their results are needed, rather than you having to wait for them.

::Top::

In most cases, if you are using IMAP4, you will be using SpamPal's IMAP4 Proxy, when setting up SpamPal.

One of the main problems with SpamPal is that the user has to reconfigure their mail client to use it. This often causes problems. With the transparent proxy, you no longer have to change your mail program's settings - just install SpamPal and it'll filter your mail automatically!

Before you can do this however, you'll need to tell SpamPal that you want to use the transparent proxy.

From the main Connections screen, click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to modify the settings)

Note 1: Administrator Rights...

Don't report networking error messages; If you enable this option, you can suppress any error messages from SpamPal it may give you, for example, if your system goes offline or your Internet Provider's server has a problem.

Add X-SpamPal Header - allowing SpamPal to modify the message headers (or body) is very slow in IMAP4, as the entire message has to be downloaded by SpamPal, modified, then uploaded back to your mailserver. Therefore, by default SpamPal allows no changes to the headers or body of the message - no **SPAM** tags in the subjects, no X-SpamPal: header lines, etc. You can make SpamPal add these to all or just spam messages by using this option.

Automatically delete spam messages - will mark as deleted any messages that SpamPal detects to be suspected spam. By default, this is disabled, and I strongly recommend that it remains disabled until you are very confident that this won't result in anything important getting mistakenly deleted, or possibly forever.

Automatically move spam messages - SpamPal's default action for an IMAP4 account is to move spam messages to another folder. You can specify the folder name here - if it doesn't exist then SpamPal will try to create it, and give you an error message if it fails.

Expunge messages deleted by SpamPal - When enabled, Spampal will automatically purge the messages that are deleted by SpamPal.

Only filter messages in mailbox - Which normally you leave set to INBOX

Filter first xx k of message body - There isn't much point filtering the entirity of large messages - this allows you to specify how much of the message body should be filtered by a plugin like RegExFilter or HtmlModify. Lower values will make SpamPal operate quicker, but at the expense of slightly less accuracy

Filter Messages: with Recent flag / without Seen flag / all - this is a technical setting that you probably won't need to alter from with Recent flag. A few IMAP4 servers out there seem not to set the Recent flag correctly, however, so if SpamPal seems to not filtering some or all of your mail, try altering this to without Seen flag, and if it still doesn't work set it to all.

Prefetch messages to improve performance: Having this option enabled means that SpamPal will try to improve it's performance by pre-fetching headers and full messages in a wider range of circumstances. This alllows DNSBL queries to be made earlier. so there's more chance of them being already completed when their results are needed, rather than you having to wait for them.

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From the main Connections screen, click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to modify the settings)

Expunge messages deleted by SpamPal - When enabled, Spampal will automatically purge the messages that are deleted by SpamPal.

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If you need to use Secure Password Authentication or SASL authentication, you cannot use the IMAP (any username) option, Instead, you have to use the IMAP (specific servername) option.

Ie. you have to tell SpamPal directly what IMAP server is it to use.From the main Connections screen, click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to modify the settings)

In the Settings tab screen, which is currently set to a Protocol of IMAP4 and a Proxy type of Specific servername, you can modify is the Local Port Number. The main reason for wanting to change from the default IMAP4 port of 143, is if there is a conflict with another program, such as an anti-virus scanner (see this page for more details on how to find conflicts).

In this method of specifying server names, every server must have a different port number. The default port number for IMAP4 is 143, but obviously only one server will be able to use this, so if you have more than one mailserver give them different port numbers. Almost any number about 1024 and about 10000 should be okay.

On this screen, you also enter the IMAP4 server name (usually of your ISP) that you are going to use.

Filter first xx k of message body - There isn't much point filtering the entirity of large messages - this allows you to specify how much of the message body should be filtered by a plugin like RegExFilter or HtmlModify. Lower values will make SpamPal operate quicker, but at the expense of slightly less accuracy

::Top::

You can use SpamPal's SMTP auto-whitelisting support to automatically learn which addresses you send email's to and automatically whitelist those addresses. The aim of this is to speed up processing of your email and to keep your friends and contacts emails, from being marked as spam.

One of the main problems with SpamPal is that the user has to reconfigure their mail client to use it. This often causes problems. With the transparent proxy, you no longer have to change your mail program's settings - just install SpamPal and it'll filter your mail automatically!

Before you can do this however, you'll need to tell SpamPal that you want to use the transparent proxy.

From the main Connections screen, click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to modify the settings)

Select a Protocol of SMTP and a Proxy Type of Transparent.

Note 1: Administrator Rights...

Note 2: SMTP Port

Make sure that the local port number setting is 25

Now, go into your email program's configuration or account properties settings, find the setting for SMTP server or Outgoing mail server, and change this to localhost. Try to send yourself an email message to check that it works.

Now, whenever you send an email to anyone, their address will be added to the auto-whitelist, so there is no danger of their reply being tagged as spam.

Don't report networking error messages; If you enable this option, it will uppress any error messages that SpamPal would normally give you, for example, if your system goes offline or your Internet Provider's server has a problem.

Auto-whitelist receptients of outgoing mail; normally enabled, which means that anyone that you send an email to, will have their email address automatically added to the whitelist.

Note 3: Privacy: auto-whitelist receptients of outgoing mail

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)

Note 4: Never Auto-Whitelist option

if you frequently send emails to yourself, add your own email address to the never Auto-whitelist list, as some spammers forge spam mail to look like you sent it yourself.

Reject messages based on Mail-From; Rejects messages with a specific Mail From envelope field. The Mail From email address that you wish to block should added into SpamPal's normal blacklist screen,
ie. Options, Blacklists, Email Addresses.

Reject messages bassed on Client IP; Rejects emails sent from a specific host. The IP address that you wish to block should added into SpamPal's normal blacklist screen, ie. Options, Blacklists, IP Addresses.

::Top::

You can use SpamPal's SMTP auto-whitelisting support to automatically learn which addresses you send email's to and automatically whitelist those addresses. The aim of this is to speed up processing of your email and to keep your friends and contacts emails, from being marked as spam.

From the main Connections screen, click Add to create a new port (or select Properties to modify the settings)

Select a Protocol of SMTP and a Proxy Type of Specific Servername and enter in the Server Name box, the name of your SMTP mail server (this may be listed in your email program's configuration as outgoing mail server).

Note 1: SMTP Port

Make sure that the local port number setting is 25

Now, whenever you send an email to anyone, their address will be added to the auto-whitelist, so there is no danger of their reply being tagged as spam.

Note 2: Privacy: auto-whitelist receptients of outgoing mail

Note 3: Use the Never Auto-Whitelist option...

if you frequently send emails to yourself, add your own email address to the never Auto-whitelist list, as some spammers forge spam mail to look like you sent it yourself.

Add Received Header line to messages; This options adds an extra Received line to your outgoing message, saying that your email was sent through SpamPal. Normally this is fine, however, some ISP's systems may look at the Received header inserted by SpamPal and refuse to send the mail message. Turning off the insertion of the Received header may solve your problem.

Example: Received Header lines added: Ticked.

Received: from user by Junio with ESMTP for <steveb@xxxxxx.co.uk>; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 09:18:19 +0100
Received: from [192.168.42.1] ([127.0.0.1]) by [127.0.0.1] with ESMTP (SpamPal v1.69) sender <steveb@xxxxxx.co.uk>; 27 Oct 2004 09:17:15 +0100
Message-ID: <417F598B.4070706@xxxxxx.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 09:17:15 +0100
From: Steve Basford <steveb@xxxxxx.co.uk>
Organization: What?
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Steve Basford <steveb@xxxxxx.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Server: VPOP3 V1.5.0h - Registered
Subject: test

Example: Received Header lines added: Un-Ticked

Received: from user by Junio with ESMTP for <steveb@xxxxxx.co.uk>; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 09:19:37 +0100
Message-ID: <417F59D9.5030500@xxxxxx.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 09:18:33 +0100
From: Steve Basford <steveb@xxxxxx.co.uk>
Organization: What?
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Steve Basford <steveb@xxxxxx.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Server: VPOP3 V1.5.0h - Registered
Subject: test

The options on the right of the port properties dialog can be ignored, unless you have SpamPal listening on an IP address other than 127.0.0.1, in which case you'll need to click the Permissions button and add this I.P. address to the Local I.P. addresses list.

Note 4: SMTP I.P. Address

running SpamPal's SMTP support on an I.P. address other than 127.0.0.1 is very dangerous, as this could mean your system can be used as an Open Relay

Note 5: Local Email Addresses format

the RCPT TO address needs to be bounded with < and > in order for the permissions to work.

For example:
RCPT TO: someone@domain.com wouldn't work but: RCPT TO: <someone@domain.com> would

SpamPal can also be used to filter spam at the SMTP server level.

Basically, you just have to move your old SMTP relay to another port or another machine, set up SpamPal where it was, create an SMTP (specific servername) port in SpamPal's options dialog, using port 25 (or whatever your old relay was using) and enter the name of the new location of your real mailserver in the Servername field.

Tweak the options on the right (the Apply standard SpamPal filters and plugins option will only tag spam; the Reject messages based on client I.P. will reject email from a DNSBL-listed (or blacklisted) I.P. address).

You'll also need to click the Permissions dialog and enter all the local email addresses; SpamPal will reject any RCPT TO: address that is not one of these. (You can use wildcards if you want, but be careful!) If this version of SpamPal will also be used by your own users to proxy outgoing mails, enter your local I.P. addresses in the relevent field; the restriction on RCPT TO: won't apply to connections from these I.P. addresses.

It's probably safest to install SpamPal as an internal mail relay, with a proper mail server handling the external connections; however, you lose the ability to reject mail based on client I.P. address if you do this. (The standard SpamPal filters should however work fine.)

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