I have been playing with the email filtering capabilities built into Netscape 4.78 with Netscape Messenger. (I tried 6.x versions of Netscape and didn't like them)

Does anybody know how these filters work?

Specifically...

Are the key words case sensitive?
Are wild card characters allowed? If so, what are they?
How would I indicate a blank field as being a key word?
How would I indicate a non-blank field as being a key word?

I would like to see if the Netscape filters will serve my anti-spam needs before going to some sort of dedicated stand-alone spam filter.

tanstaafl.

I have been playing with the email filtering capabilities built into Netscape 4.78 with Netscape Messenger. (I tried 6.x versions of Netscape and didn't like them)

That's a shame because the latest versions of Mozilla have dedicated spam filtering built in.

Simple filters like the ones in Netscape 4 are not really going to cut it nowadays, unless you want to spend your whole life tweaking and adding to them. You really need a dedicated spam filtering system with filters that a bunch of people are working on, or a filter based on statistics.

If you really don't want to use Netscape 6 or Mozilla then you can use something like POPFile http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ which does spam filtering the same way Mozilla 6 does, using Bayesian stats to classify messages. I'm done with tweaking filters, using a filter that uses stats is much less painful, just the occasional bit of retraining (throwing a message back to the filter and saying "you got this one wrong").

http://www.digiportal.com/

I just installed the other day, seems like it might just work.

It appears that Netscape corp is aware that the later versions suck, as they keep updating the 4.x version. I had a problem with 4.78 in that the mail files kept growing despite deleting entries and "compacting". 4.79 fixed this. 4.8 is less crash prone under windows2000.

Mozilla seems ok but lacks spell checking, which I use a lot. I've been using filtering for a while now, but it's getting hard to keep up.

http://www.digiportal.com/

I just installed the other day, seems like it might just work.

I dunno -- it seems a bit draconian to me. I mean, this program would not only eliminate 100% of my spam, it would eliminate at least 90% of my legitimate email as well. Who would ever send me mail if they had to do all this:


ChoiceMail is a junk-mail blocking system that requires senders to get permission before they can send you emails.

Sender must have permission to send email to recipient. Permission is not automatic.

PROCESS:
Unknown sender sends email to recipient.
Sender receives automatic reply requesting registration at a website.
Sender fills in name + reason for contact + code that guarantees authenticity.
Recipient gets a popup to let him know someone wants to contact him and why.
All other email just disappears -- recipient is not disturbed.

The Netscape mail filter would really pretty much suit my needs -- if only it worked as it is supposed to. I got an email in my "inbox" today with a seven-word subject line, and FIVE OF THE SEVEN WORDS were in my filter list! So either it doesn't work like it is supposed to, or I am just too dumb to figure it out.

I have looked at the MailWasher program, haven't installed it or tried it yet, would prefer not to have to deal with a separate stand-alone process each time I check my email.

tanstaafl.

Well, it doesn't eliminate ANY of my legitimate email; have you actually tried it? The reason probably is that anytime I respond to someone, I automatically have their email address added to outlook. When you install Choicemail it imports ALL of those email addresses and puts them to the "white list"; anyone not on the whitelist gets sent an email asking for authorization; mass marketers will never fill it out so they will never come through. For example... today I received 21 "unknown" messages meaning choicemail obviously did not recognize the senders and when I looked at them, I didn't either. All of the email addresses and domains on the white list did come through. So, I'm not sure why 90% of your legitimate would not come through, it's actually a simple process. It may *seem* be a little more time consuming to set up but as long as I don't get unsolicated email I am happy.

I have used Mcaffee SpamKiller with the filter updates and it really seems Draconian to me since it'll acually stop legitate email from coming through and it'll let spam come through. I don't see how a filter list will ever become 100% effective if you don't do it like Choice mail.

My opinion of course and I am still on my 14day free trail.

later,

Well, it doesn't eliminate ANY of my legitimate email; have you actually tried it? The reason probably is that anytime I respond to someone, I automatically have their email address added to outlook. When you install Choicemail it imports ALL of those email addresses and puts them to the "white list"; anyone not on the whitelist gets sent an email asking for authorization;

Thats great if you never expect much mail beyond a few friends. But, if someone comes across your site and has an interest in mailing you, that interest may not follow long enough to wait for a reply that states they need to be registered to e-mail you. Also, I would never use such a service for the e-mail address that sits on my resume. I'd personally never hire someone not interested in hearing my response without making me hop through hoops.

Think of it this way. I am the one behind the [email protected] address. (The address that is e-mailed when you use the "Email BBS Admin" at the bottom). Would you appreciate it if you had sent me an urgent request for help, to only see a reply siting in your inbox hours later (thanks to some e-mail delay somewhere) asking you to register before the e-mail will be accepted again?

I believe in two things with spam:
1. Never delete a single thing. Flag it and toss it into a folder to be reviewed every once in a while. If I hadn't done this, I would have tossed a few critical things that managed to get tagged as spam.
2. Never make the sender change their normal patterns. The system some ISPs use is a database that is built by generating an automatic reply and seeing if it bounces. This still can cause problems if it's deleting mail, but works great as an additional flag.

Let's get back to figuring out why your Netscape filters aren't working.

Do any messages get filtered?

What exactly do your filters look like? Are you sure you used the ``contains'' action and not ``is''?

Do any messages get filtered?

Yes. More than half of them go to the spam folder. The curious thing is... why don't all of the ones eligible for filtering go there?

What exactly do your filters look like?

I have attached a copy of my "rules.dat" file to this post so you can see what (and how) I am filtering.

Are you sure you used the ``contains'' action and not ``is''?

I did find (and correct) a syntax error in one of the rules (one of the "To:" rules) but all the rest were correct.

The email that piqued my animosity had a subject line that read:

Printer Cartridges - Save up to 80% - Free Shipping Offer

I have subject filters in place for: Printer; Cartridges; Save; %; Free; and Offer. Any one of those six filters should have sent that email to the spam folder, and I am baffled as to why none of them did.

Here is a list of the subject words being filtered:

explicit, girl, hardcore, hot, penile
penis, porn, sex, size, teen
$, cartridges, DVD, free, gift
inkjet, mini, norton, sample, toner
viagra, video, money, mortgage, certificate
approval, approved, burnside, cash, chat
confirmation, congratulations, debt, fat, friend
gift, important, improve, interest, klez
offer, profit, rate, sale, save
savings, warning, winner, Christmas, [empty]
password, %, printer

In addition, there are other filters for Sender, To, CC, and Priority.

I don't understand why these filters aren't more effective.

tanstaafl.

Many (okay, several) of your rules say ``move to folder: Inbox'' instead of ``move to folder: spam''. That looks like your problem.

Many (okay, several) of your rules say ``move to folder: Inbox'' instead of ``move to folder: spam''. That looks like your problem.



You are correct -- two of them were directed to the wrong folder.

Those two contained:
penis, porn, sex, size, teen
$, cartridges, DVD, free, gift

and I am guessing that the way the filter works, the first applicable filter it finds will be the one that does the work. In this case, the first filter for "Printer Cartridges - Save up to 80% - Free Shipping Offer" that applied would have been the word "cartridges" and with the mis-labelled folder specification it would have gone to in-box.

While I am still not happy with the overall filtering capabilities of Netscape, at least I now understand that it was only doing what I, through my own ineptness, told it to do.

I am coming to the conclusion that a simple word filter is not going to be enough to do the job. No matter how many words I filter out, there will still be plenty of spam coming in that don't contain any of those words. So, I guess it's time to start investigating more aggressive solutions.

Thanks, Bitt, for the heads up, and for displaying to everybody on the bbs how dumb I am!

tanstaafl.

ps: have you started that book I recommended?

I am coming to the conclusion that a simple word filter is not going to be enough to do the job. No matter how many words I filter out, there will still be plenty of spam coming in that don't contain any of those words.

As well as legitimate email that contains the words you're already trying to filter. I've long since come to the conclusion that word filters aren't the way to go about stopping spam. Proper spam prevention has to work on the mail server, not in the local user's mailbox.

My ISP has a quite agressive set of spam-stopping features running on their mail server, and I do manage to get essentially zero spam to that address. However, there is also the problem that their spam-stopping features sometimes kill legitimate emails, as many of my friends will attest.