This page gives instructions
on installing and setting-up SpamPal for use with the e-mail client
program,
Outlook Express
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1. Install
SpamPal
2. Configure
SpamPal
3. Configure
your email program
3.1 Change your POP3 settings
3.2 Change your IMAP4 Settings
3.3 Change your SMTP settings
3.4 Create Filter/Message rules
4. Email
Virus Scanners and Firewalls
5. Whitelist
friends and contacts
5.1 Export your contacts email addresses
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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.
If this installation is an upgrade of SpamPal
then the existing configuration of Outlook Express 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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| 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 email program 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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| Load Outlook
Express, then select Accounts from the
Tools menu, and select the Mail
tab to see the available accounts, e.g.: |
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| We'll start
with the first account (most people will only have one). Select it
and then click Properties. Go to the Servers
tab of the window that comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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Screen before
changes:
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To reconfigure your
email program, first make a careful note of your original settings.
You should append whatever
value you currently have in your Incoming
(POP3) Server setting,
to whatever you currently
have in the
Username field (seperated
with a @ sign), and change the Incoming
(POP3) Server setting
to 127.0.0.1.
e.g. if your original values were:
Incoming (POP3) Server:
your.mailserver.com
Username: fred.bloggs
then you would, for example, change them
to:
Incoming (POP3) Server: 127.0.0.1
Username: fred.bloggs@your.mailserver.com |
Screen after
changes:
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| continue
regardless; SpamPal copes with usernames that contain two @s
without difficulty. |
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You
may, at this point, get an error message about SpamPal not being
able to listen on the standard POP3 port.This is nothing to
be worried about; just write down the port number SpamPal tells
you and continue with this guide
This message means SpamPal is using Port 1110
instead of 110.
You don't have to put it into SpamPal because SpamPal already
knows it is using port 110.
Instead, you have to tell your email program (for example Outlook
Express) to use port 1110
instead of 110.
To do this, first install SpamPal. Then set up OE, exactly as
given in the instructions. In addition, if you go to Tools,
Accounts,
Properties
and click on the Advanced
tab, you will see that you
have a box labelled Incoming
Mail (POP3) which
currently says 110.
You need to change this to 1110.
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Click the Settings...
button beside it. Now, select Log
on using and enter
your original username
and password i.e.. What
they were before you modified the username to install SpamPal
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| Amend
the port number to the server name in the login name field
using a colon. For example, if BlueYonder ran their POP3 server
on port 8090, I'd end up with a login name of jf004d7582@pop3.blueyonder.co.uk:8090
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| Don't
worry; just add @localhost to the username and leave the server
name as is |
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| Incoming
Mail (POP3):mail.btopenworld.com |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username: fred.bloggs |
Username: fred.bloggs@mail.btopenworld.com |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3): pop.west.cox.net |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username: johnsmith |
Username:johnsmith@pop.west.cox.net |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3): pop.telus.net |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username: fax07734 |
fax07734@pop.telus.net |
| Incoming
Mail (POP3): 192.168.1.1 |
Incoming
Mail (POP3): 127.0.0.1 |
| Username: mary_jones |
Username: mary_jones@192.168.1.1 |
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The
above Incoming POP3
Server Name, can be called:
Incoming Mail
Server, POP3 server, POP3 Username
or Account Name depending on your email program.
There are also two ways of specifying the local
server name, which should mean exactly the same thing (but on
some system only one of them will work): localhost
or 127.0.0.1 |
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| Now click OK
to confirm, and repeat this for all the remaining accounts. When
you're done, close the Accounts window.
Now try to check your mail; if you don't get any
errors, continue to the next step. You may be asked to re-enter
your POP3 passwords; this is nothing to worry about. If you get
an error from Outlook Express, check that you've configured the
incoming POP3 server to 127.0.0.1
and, if necessary, that the port has been set right. If you get
an error from SpamPal, check you've added the servername to the
username correctly, and that your Internet connection is active.
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| If there is a need to change you POP3, SMTP or IMAP ports,
then start
with the first account (most people will only have one). Select it
and then click Properties. Go to the Advanced tab
of the window that comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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| The
default Server
Timouts of 1 minute
can be a little too small an amout when using SpamPal.
If you are finding your email is timing out then perhaps
increase this figure to 4 minutes. |
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| If you are still having a problem
with your username, why not give this simple setup
page a
try |
a) Many connection problems are caused because of firewalls.
If you
are using ZoneAlarm, it will pop up a box asking if SpamPal
is to be allowed to access the Internet. You must answer
yes to this, otherwise SpamPal cannot connect to your mailbox.
b) Many POP3 connection
problems are caused because SpamPal is not running on Port 110. Did you
get an error message at any point telling you that port 110 was
in use? To check to see which ports SpamPal is using, right click
on the umbrella icon in the tray to bring up SpamPal's Options window, click on connections, and confirm that the port number
for the POP3 protocol is 110
c) Another common problem
is that the POP3 port is running in the wrong mode. SpamPal can
run in Any
servername mode
which is the recommended configuration, and Specific
Server mode
which is only used for special cases. The line in your connections
config should read: 110 POP3
(any servername) If you do not have a line
exactly like that, please click on the
110, click on the properties button,
and change the setting to: POP3
(Any Servername).
d) When you try to connect to collect your mail, does SpamPal show
any sign of activity? The umbrella icon in the tray shows an animation
of it spinning when SpamPal is active. Also, if you keep the SpamPal
status window open, you should see commands coming into the Active
Connections window when SpamPal is active.
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| Load Outlook Express, then select Accounts from
the Tools menu, and select the Mail tab
to see the available accounts, e.g.: |
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| We'll start with the first account
(most people will only have one). Select it and then click Properties.
Go to the Servers tab of the window that
comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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You'll need to make changes to the Incoming
Mail (IMAP) and Account Name fields.
Write down the name of your IMAP Server in the IMAP Server box (e.g..imap.yourisp.com)
and then replace this with 127.0.0.1
Now add an @ symbol and the IMAP Server name that you wrote down earlier, to
the
Username logon box (e.g.. my_login_name@imap.yourisp.com) |
Now click OK to
confirm, and repeat this for all the remaining accounts. When you're
done, close the Accounts window.
Now try to check your mail; if you don't get
any errors, continue to the next step. You may be asked to re-enter
your IMAP passwords; this is nothing to worry about. If you get
an error from Outlook Express, check that you've configured the
incoming IMAP server to 127.0.0.1 and,
if necessary, that the port has been set right. If you get an error
from SpamPal, check you've added the servername to the username
correctly, and that your Internet connection is active.
When you check your mail, you should also notice
that you only get non-spam email
in your inbox, as the spam marked message are now in a new folder
called spamtrap, which is created
by SpamPal to store all your spam marked messages: |
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| If you wish
to use SpamPal's SMTP Proxy to auto-whitelist any email addresses
that you send to, you will need to change Outlook Express's SMTP settings,
as follows |
| Start with
the first account (most people will only have one). Select it and
then click Properties. Go to the Servers
tab of the window that comes up, which should look a bit like this: |
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Now, take
a note of your current Outgoing Mail (SMTP)
Server, for example: smtp.myisp.co.uk
Now change the current Outgoing Mail (SMTP)
Server, to: 127.0.0.1
Now go to SpamPal's Connections
page: |
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Now click on Add port
and change the Port Type to SMTP
Now, change the Server Name to
the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
name, you noted down earlier,
e.g..smtp.myisp.co.uk
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| Now, whenever
you send an email, SpamPal will automatically auto-whitelist it |
Occasionally,
a spammer might forge the email address of someone who is
in your auto-whitelist - for example, a colleague or an alternate
email address or yours. While you don't want to put this
person
in your blacklist because they send you lots of genuine email,
you don't want them to end up in your auto-whitelist and
bypass
SpamPal's spam-checking features.
Clicking on the Exclusions
pane will bring up a window into which you can enter the email
addresses of people who should never be added to the auto-whitelist.
Just add your colleagues here and you won't have to worry
about spammers forging their addresses to bypass SpamPal's
filtering. You can even add your entire employer's domain
- e.g. *@acme-widgets.com |
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If you are are using an IMAP4 server, you
will not need to setup a filter/message rule on your email program,
as SpamPal moves any spam tagged messages automatically into a folder called inbox.spamtrap on
your
server.
If you are are using a POP3 server
and want your email program to automatically filter the SpamPal-marked messages
into a separate Mailbox, so that you can more easily review them, continue
as follows |
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Assuming you've already
got a folder setup in Outlook Express for example, called spam,
then:
Go to Message Rules
in the Tools menu, and
select Mail; this will bring up a list
of all of the filters (or as Outlook Express calls them, rules)
that are current set up. Click New to
create a new one.
Normally we'd make a filter to transfer everything
containing SpamPal's special header into a spam folder. However,
since Outlook Express doesn't allow such advanced filters, we'll
have to create a rule to detect anything with **SPAM**
in the subject line. SpamPal will add this to any messages it thinks
are spam; however, you'll have to be careful you don't change this
to something else using SpamPal's Options dialog.
Firstly, select to filter when
the subject line contains specific words, and an action move
it to a specified folder. Now click the blue contains
specified words in the box at the bottom; type **SPAM**
(without the quotes) into the field at the top of the window that
appears, and click Add to add it to
the list.
Click OK to leave that, then click the
blue specified folder and click
New Folder to create a new folder called
Spam Trap (or whatever).
Your rule description should now be:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
Where the Subject line contains
'**SPAM**'
Move it to the Spam Trap folder
And Stop processing more rules
So, you should end up with a rule looking a bit
like this: |
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| Make
sure your new rule for SpamPal is first
in the list, if you have a lot of other message rules you use
and als make your SpamPal rule end with And
Stop processing more rules |
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| If
you have a lot of blocked senders then it is worth Removing
them from the list, as SpamPal
will do a much better job of coping with Spam and removing the
blocked senders will also speed up the processing of email. |
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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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You can use this
procedure to automatically
export your Outlook Express contacts or you can use SpamPal's 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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| You can use this procedure
to automatically export
your Outlook Express email
addresses, so that you can quickly whitelist your contacts which
will speed
up the processing of your emails and to prevent SpamPal from marking
your friends or contact's emails as spam. |
| This completes the installation and
setup. |
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