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This page gives you detailed information about how to use SpamPal together with the local mail server Hamster. This page was written using Classic Hamster Vr. 1.3 (Build 1.3.23.205) , however, it should also work for newer versions.

Quick Index

1. Install SpamPal

2. Configure SpamPal

3. Configure your Hamster Server

3.1 Change your Hamster settings
3.2 Create Filter/Message rules

4. Email Virus Scanners and Firewalls

5. Whitelist friends and contacts

1. Install SpamPal

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 Hamster 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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2. Configure SpamPal
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
Now change the Local Port Number to port 1101 (see screen below)
All you need to know about extra configuration can be found here

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3. Configure your Hamster Server

Now you have set up SpamPal, you need to tell your Hamster server to fetch your mail through the SpamPal proxy rather than directly from your ISP.

You need to 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.


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3.1 Change your Hamster settings

After Hamster has been started open the pull down menu Configuration and choose Mail: settings & server. Then click on pane POP3-Mailserver to have a list of existing - if any - mail server shown:

Then click on the button Add. A new window will pop up where you have to enter the server name 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) and in addition to that an optional alias to be able to differentiate the server names. You may also add a special port address (which is only necessary if SpamPal accepts incoming POP3 connections on a different port than 110).
After you pressed OK you have to change the Mailserver-settings for mail server 127.0.0.1/test,1101.
Note 1: SSL
Be sure not to have SSL activated as SpamPal cannot use SSL. However, you can add this functionality by using the external tool OpenSSL/Stunnel more detail can be found here

Now you have to press the button Edit to enter a Username and a Password.

In the field Username you have to add a
@ at the end of the prior user name. After the @ you have to add the name of the POP3 mail server which had been entered into the field Servername before the installation of SpamPal.

After these changes you should see something like this:

Note 2: If the server name already is localhost
Don't worry; just add @localhost to the username and leave the server name as is
Note 3: If your POP3 username already contains an @
continue regardless; SpamPal copes with usernames that contain two @s without difficulty.
Typical POP3 Server Examples (do not use directly)
Eg. 1: the original values of:
Eg. 1: should be changed to new values of:
Username: fred.bloggs Username: fred.bloggs@mail.btopenworld.com
Incoming Mail (POP3) Server:mail.btopenworld.com Incoming Mail (POP3) Server: localhost
Eg. 2: the original values of:
Eg. 2: should be changed to new values of:
Username:  johnsmith Username:johnsmith@pop3.west.cox.net
Incoming Mail (POP3) Server: pop3.west.cox.net Incoming Mail (POP3) Server: localhost
Eg. 3: the original values of:
Eg. 3: should be changed to new values of:
Username: fax07734 Username: fax07734@pop.telus.net
Incoming Mail (POP3) Server:  pop.telus.net Incoming Mail (POP3) Server: localhost
Eg. 4: the original values of:
Eg. 4: should be changed to new values of:
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
Now you have to enter the Password or ? if you prefer to enter it on every mail fetch.

Finally press OK to save all changes.

Now try to check your mailbox; if you don't get any errors, continue to the next step.

If you get an error from your Hamster, check that you've configured the incoming POP3 server to 127.0.0.1 or localhost and, if necessary, that the port has been set right.

If you have more than one POP3 mailbox, repeat this step for each of them.


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3.2 Create Filter/Message Rules

If you want Hamster to automatically filter the SpamPal-marked messages into a separate Hamster Mailbox,
so that you can more easily review them, continue as follows.

Now you have two possibilities: either you edit the file mailfilt.hsc or you set up a filter in your email program.

Please refer to the others manuals if you want to filter using your email program

If you want to use Hamster for your filtering actions go on like this.

You have to add a line containing a filter action that either deletes or moves every message with the string X-SpamPal: SPAM to another account or folder.

For example, the following filter:

=set(spam) X-SpamPal: {^(?-i)SPAM\b}

will move all incoming spam marked by SpamPal to the local user spam. You might want to redirect it to another user or even have it killed by default ("=kill(spam)...").

Note: Work around to fix SpamPal's stats
You have to add in the corresponding server.ini the line

UseTOPCommand=0

in the [POP3] section

(or disable all load/kill/ignore rules in the mailfilt.hst)

Caution: If you use the mentioned line "UseTOPCommand=0" you have to be aware that Hamster's special features to get the header and leave or kill matching mails on the server without having to download the complete mail won't work anymore


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4. Email Virus Scanners & Firewalls

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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5. Whitelist Friends and Contacts

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

Note 1: Privacy: smtp automatic whitelist
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)

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):

d) Use the SpamPal Whitelist Email Addresses page to manually whitelist your email addresses:
Note 2: Headers that the whitelist compares against
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:

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
This completes the installation and setup.

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