A.P. Lawrence

POPFile - Multi-Platform Bayesian Pop Mail Scanner in Perl

Mon Jul 5 16:38:12 2004 Multi-Platform Bayesian Pop Mail Scanner in Perl
Posted by Tony Lawrence
Search Keys: spam, mail
Referencing: http://popfile.sourceforge.net/

This is a GPL Perl app that will run just about anywhere you can run Perl. There are two versions you can download; one for Windows and one for anything else. The only difference in the Windows download is that it includes a Windows installer and Perl itself.

The functionality of this is beautifully simple. It runs on your machine, waiting for POP connections from your email client(s). You make two changes to any email clients you want to use with POPFile: you change the Incoming Server name to 127.0.0.1, and preface your user name with the real POP server's address and a colon. For example, if your user name is joe, and your real POP server is 192.168.2.3, that would become 192.168.2.3:joe

That's all it takes to insert POPFile between you and your server. The usefulness of that insertion is in your ability to define "buckets", which end up just as header tags or modification of the Subject: line (your choice). What goes into a particular bucket is determined both by Bayesian filtering and by "Magnets" that you define. All of this is done in a web interface running at 127.0.0.1:8080 by default. The need to go to a separate web page to train POPFile is the only annoyance; on the other hand that lets you easily train for multiple user accounts. Back at your mail client, add rules appropriate to the headers or Subject modifications you specified. Clean and simple.

If you are already doing virus or other scanning, POPFile can easily fit in the pipeline so that everything happens as it should. As this is all Perl code, you could easily modify it if need be, though the simplicity of operation probably would make that unnecessary for most users.

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