VPOP3
is an Internet email server and gateway for small and medium sized
businesses (and some larger ones too!) SpamPal can be easily be used
to provide front-end protection from SPAM for all VPOP3 mailboxes
that are setup.
This is the setup instructions needed for VPOP3 v1.5x. The setup instructions
for the latest versions (v2.x) can be found here. |
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1. Install
SpamPal
2. Configure
SpamPal
3. Configure
your VPOP3 Server
3.1 Change your POP3 settings
3.2 Create Filter/Message rules
4. Email
Virus Scanners and Firewalls
5. Whitelist
friends and contacts
5.1 Using the automatic SMTP Whitelist
(example)
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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.
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If you are
already running SpamPal and then
install VPOP3 you may see an error box (for ports 110 and
25) like this:
This just means that you have to change the default SpamPal
ports, as they are conflicting with VPOP3
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| If this installation is an upgrade
of SpamPal then the existing configuration of VPOP3 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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To setup SpamPal, go to
Options and then look at the Connections
pane (see screen below).
Now select the POP3 (any servername)
option and click Properties |
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| Now change the Local
Port Number to port 9110
(see screen below) |
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| All you need to
know about extra configuration can be found here |
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Now you have set
up SpamPal, you need to tell your VPOP3 server 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 you only need to change your POP3
settings. |
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Go to the VPOP3 Settings
page in VPOP3
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Now, to reconfigure VPOP3, first
make a careful note of your original settings.
You should append whatever
value you currently have in your
User ID setting, to whatever
you currently have in the Username
field (seperated
with a @ sign), and change the Address
setting to 127.0.0.1.
e.g. if your original values
were:
Address: your.mailserver.com
User ID: fred.bloggs
then you would, for example, change them
to:
Address: 127.0.0.1
User ID: fred.bloggs@your.mailserver.com
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Now, make sure you change the PORT
field to match the Local Port Number
(port 9110) that you setup in SpamPal
ealier.
The new setup should look like the screen below: |
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| Don't
worry; just add @localhost to the username and leave the server
name as is |
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| continue
regardless; SpamPal copes with usernames that contain two @s
without difficulty. |
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| Username:
fred.bloggs |
Username:
fred.bloggs@mail.btopenworld.com |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server: |
Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server: localhost
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| Username:
johnsmith |
Username:johnsmith@pop3.west.cox.net |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server: pop3.west.cox.net |
Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server: localhost |
| Username:
fax07734 |
fax07734@pop.telus.net |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server:
pop.telus.net |
Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server: localhost |
| Username:
mary_jones |
Username:
mary_jones@192.168.1.1 |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server:
192.168.1.1 |
Incoming
Mail (POP3) Server: 127.0.0.1 |
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a)
In order to get RegEx Filter to scan the whole message body
of these emails, you will need to add the
command CHECKPREVIEW
into the filters.dat file.
Strictly speaking, RegExFilter also checks messages that are
received by the TOP
command when CHECKPREVIEW
is added to the rule file. Because of speed reasons RegExFilter
does not check TOP
received messages (message previews) by defaultb) You will
also need to go to the Connections
options, bring up the POP3
port properties and set the amount
of message body to filter for Message
Previews and for Full
Message fetches to be
the same value or perhaps increase
both values a little
What happens is VPOP3 first fetches just the message preview
(the first entry for the message in your logfile; as you can
see, it's not marked as spam), stores the subject line from
that, then fetches the message entirely - in the default setting
SpamPal will look at more of the message, and in this case
RegExFilter finds something further down the
message that causes it to be tagged as spam. However, VPOP3
then puts the subject line it fetched with the message preview
onto the message, hence the problem you're seeing.
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If you want VPOP3
to automatically filter the SpamPal-marked messages into a separate
VPOP3 Mailbox,
so that you can more easily review them, continue as follows. |
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a) Setup a new VPOP user, called SPAM
b) In the directory that you used to install VPOP3
(e.g.. C:\Program Files\VPOP3) you should have the download rules
(or filters) that VPOP3 uses, when processing mail, called DLRULES.DAT.
If you want any Spampal detected messages to be
moved to the SPAM Mailbox, so
that the users don't seem them, then you need to add the following
lines to the end of your DLRULES.DAT
file:
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+>spam%Redirect
spam into the 'spam' mailbox
X-SpamPal: SPAM |
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c) Now any SPAM
messages you receive will go to the SPAM
Mailbox, for you to either View, Delete or Move into another VPOP3
Mailbox
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| a)
Make sure you are using a version of vpop3™ higher
than 1.4.6 beta
b)
You can also change the download rule to filter on Subject,
instead of the X-SpamPal header:
+>spam%Redirect spam into
the 'spam' mailbox
Subject: **SPAM**
c) Sometimes
vpop3 does not receiving the change of subject when using
dlrules.dat and therefore does not put spam into the correct
mailbox. This small program can be used as an external router
to fix the problem. To download, go to the SpamPal
plugins page and look for GlrRoute
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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) Use
the SpamPal 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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This is a walkthough on how to setup VPOP3 and
SpamPal to use the automatic SMTP whitelist, which will whitelist
any email address that your local lan user sends out via VPOP3.
The following IP addresses are used in this example:
192.168.42.1 Client PC on Local Lan
192.168.42.42 VPOP3 Server on Local Lan
The chain we need to end up with is:
192.168.42.1:25 (PC) -> 192.168.42.42:25
(SpamPal) >- 192.168.42.42:9025
(VPOP3) -> YourISP SMTP:25
Assuming you've already got SpamPal and VPOP3 working together to
bring in POP3 email, you can now carry out the following setup.
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| First go to SpamPal's Lan
Configuration page and change the IP Address that SpamPal listens
on from it's default 127.0.0.1 to
the IP Address that VPOP3 is running on, which in this example is
192.168.42.42 |
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| Now go to the Connections
panel and select POP3 and click
Properties. |
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Now click the Security tab and
then hit the Access Control button.
Now click on the radio button Port has
its own access control list and then
enter 192.168.42.42 into
the access list, in order to allow VPOP3 to access to SpamPal. So,
you should now end up with a screen like this:
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Now that SpamPal is setup for
POP3 access using this new chain, you now need to setup SpamPal for
automatic SMTP whitelisting, which will send out it's emails to VPOP3
on port 9025
So, go to the Connections
panel and select SMTP
(or add one if you don't have one)
and click Properties.
Now make sure you change the Settings
screen to look like this, ie. using 127.0.0.1
and port 9025: |
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Now click the Security
tab and hit the Relay
Permissions button. Now enter 192.168.42.1/24
which
will only allow Local Lan users to access SpamPal's SMTP Proxy.
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Now you need to tell VPOP3's SMTP
server to receive emails from SpamPal on port 9025.
So, go to the VPOP3 Settings screen, click Local
Servers and change the SMTP Server
port to 9025 |
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