Mailman 3 June 2004 - SpamBayes

this might seem fickle...
by Nathan Sudds Sept. 25, 2004

Sept. 25, 2004

But I can't seem to get the icons back for my spambayes toolbar... I installed a toolbar for putting paypal payment buttons into my emails... it's another outlook addon.. ever since then the icons for Spambayes show up as the paypal icons... it's a minor thing but it's pretty annoying for a visual person like myself... any advice? I'm using the Windows version of the Outlook Addon of spambayes and I am running windows XP Pro with Outlook 2000. SpamBayes version .81 to start with but now I'm running the new .9 version.. and I'm glad it's much faster on my machine than .81 was... but I wouldn't mind having those icons back... Thanks, Nathan Sudds | CreativeDirector nsudds(a)arkitekture.com ::: ARKITEKTURE:::::::::::::: focusing our sites on building yours -------------------------------------------------------------------- [launch] // www.arkitekture.com

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[slightly OT] spammer 'random' words that are addressee-related?
by Denis Haskin Aug. 18, 2004

Aug. 18, 2004

(This isn't *quite* a spambayes question but I think there are knowledgable people here <grin> who can point me in the right direction to get more info. Feel free to declare this too off-topic and send me someplace else.) Like many of you (I'm sure), I'm sysadmin/network ops/hardware tech/customer support/etc for my family's home network. My wife showed me some spam she got this morning that included the usual 'random' words in the subject, but she was wondering if the words maybe weren't so random. The words seemed related to 2 email lists she's on. Now maybe this is just complete coincidence, but is it possible in fact that her email address was harvested somewhere and words were picked up from the harvesting context to be used when constructing spam to her? This seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of return... Also, we're *pretty* sure that both of these email lists are pretty well protected (e.g. they're not archived in any public place as far was we know). Also, they're obscure and small enough that I find it hard to believe it would be worth spammers' while to 'infiltrate' these lists (as they do with yahoo groups). It also occurred to me that perhaps someone else on these lists has a virus which is harvesting this from a local PC and sending it off to a spammer? Anyone have any thoughts? Is there any web site that catalogs known spamming tactics? Thanks, dwh

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RE: [Spambayes] Important: new feature!
by Tony Meyer July 4, 2004

July 4, 2004

> I checked the "Show Spam Clues" on several of these > cases and it appears that only some specific tokens > are responsible. It would be very convenient to have > direct access to the token-database and delete these > troublesome cases. This is not nearly as simple as it sounds: 1. There's no guarantee that this would work. Maybe eliminating those tokens would simply make room for others that would have the same effect. 2. Tokens don't stand alone - they arrive and leave in 'bags' (one email's worth). If you later untrained on an email that contained one of these tokens, things would break. 3. Ongoing training would mean that these tokens simply reappeared later, anyway, so you'd have to be continually editing the database. Can you perhaps identify the messages that these problematic tokens are coming from? Maybe things would be better if you simply didn't train on those messages? What is a "significant percentage", anyway? Maybe you've mistrained a message at some point? That would also explain the problem. You could try retraining from scratch. > In addition, it would be nice to have some exclude list. Please see FAQ 6.6: <http://spambayes.org/faq.html#why-don-t-you-add-whitelisting-blacklisting-t o-spambayes> =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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RE: [Spambayes] Configuration of multiple email addresses
by Tony Meyer July 2, 2004

July 2, 2004

[Michael's instructions] > I'm only using one mailserver, so I don't know for sure that > this is how to do it. It's exactly right :) You then set your mail client to connect to whichever localhost port matches the server you're after. For example, if you had: Remote Servers: mail.example.com,mail2.example.com Spambayes Ports: 110,111 Then where you had "mail.example.com" in your mail client, you'd replace it with "localhost" and port 110, and where you had "mail2.example.com" you'd replace it with "localhost" and port 111, and so on. > I don't understand what the smtp configuration is > supposed to be doing, so I have left it alone. This is only used if you want to train by forwarding messages to one of a pair of special addresses. The web-based system is much simpler, really. (And, especially once it's nicely finished up, the pop3dnd drag-and-drop training will be much better). =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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I'm running into a resource conflict; SpamBayes freezes my system
by Richard B Barger ABC APR July 2, 2004

July 2, 2004

Hello. I'm running into a resource conflict; SpamBayes freezes my system, which consists of: Computer - 2.8 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 w/ 2 GB of RAM Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 1, with all the updates Norton Systemworks 2003, v. 6.01 with Norton AntiVirus installed ZoneAlarm Pro 5.0.590.043 Video - Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead, used with two HP monitors (in case this is related to a resource conflict) SpamBayes POP3 Proxy Version 1.0rc2 I do not use Outlook. I receive a huge volume of mail, which I read in Netscape 4.79, but I open SpamBayes in Netscape 7.1 and IE 6.0; the same problems (below) occur with both browsers. I have a DSL connection. What is a huge volume? More than 1000 messages a day, most-most-most of them spam. After many false starts, I got SpamBayes up and running, and it runs smoothly and is doing a respectable job of classifying this volume of mail. Here's my bayescustomize.ini: [pop3proxy] listen_ports:110 remote_servers:mail.rbarger.com [Headers] notate_subject:unsure spam [Storage] no_cache_bulk_ham:True no_cache_large_messages:4500000 [Categorization] ham_cutoff:0.10 spam_cutoff:0.90 [Categorization] spam_cutoff:0.90 My log file (SpamBayesServer1.log) appears to be unhelpful; here it is: Service not availible [note misspelling]. Using thread. Loading database... Listener on port 110 is proxying mail.rbarger.com:110 User interface url is http://localhost:8880/ Now, I have several questions. I'll space them out in separate msgs over the next few days. Here's the most serious: After installing SpamBayes to my working-just-fine system, everything started going haywire. I monitor my Windows XP system's Event Viewer, and it shows 147 major errors from the ZoneAlarm TrueVector Service since installing SpamBayes. All seem to be related to Internet Log corruption. There were none before the install. System boots with ZoneAlarm. I click the desktop icon to load SpamBayes. I load Netscape and it works fine and SpamBayes works fine and ZoneAlarm works fine. But ... a - If I try to "configure" SpamBayes while ZoneAlarm is running, my entire computer hangs, as if it is in a loop. b - It does not matter if Netscape is loaded or not; as long as ZoneAlarm is loaded, hitting SpamBayes "configure" locks up my computer and won't release the resources without a reboot. c - If I shut ZoneAlarm off, the SpamBayes "configure" module works just fine. d - Exactly the same lockup happens with the SpamBayes "review" function. e - SpamBayes always allows me to use its View Information and Web-based "classify a message" functions. It simply doesn't let me configure or review, so long as ZoneAlarm is active. Info: I have tried resetting the Windows XP advanced performance settings for processor scheduling and memory usage, and increased my paging file size, but none of this helped. So, I'm stuck. I haven't seen any info about this problem in the SpamBayes discussion list since I started monitoring it in mid-Jan; one of the ZoneAlarm discussion groups mentioned it in passing, but really was talking about another anti-spam product. As a user, I'm convinced that there is a resource conflict between ZoneAlarm -- maybe the ZoneAlarm TrueVector module -- and SpamBayes. Both programs seem to work fine in isolation from one another, and none of these problems occur when one or the other is shut off. It's probably more info than you needed -- you may already be familiar with this resource conflict -- but I thought I'd try to be thorough. Help! Rich Barger Kansas City

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RE: [Spambayes] I'm running into a resource conflict; SpamBayes freezes my system
by Tony Meyer July 1, 2004

July 1, 2004

[...] > Service not availible [note misspelling]. Using thread. [...] This is no help to you at all (I don't have anything to offer more than Tim), but FWIW, I've fixed this typo - thanks for pointing it out! =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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RE: [Spambayes] Win XP Outlook Menu Problem
by Tony Meyer June 30, 2004

June 30, 2004

> I have SpamBayes installed and it appears to be > working just fine - EXCEPT - the menu does not > change when I go from the "Inbox" to the "Spam" > folder so that there is no "Recover from Spam" > button any longer. Please check that you're definitely in the right folder. Go to the SpamBayes Manager dialog, to the Filtering tab, and click the Browse button next to the spam folder selection. Check the hierarchy of the folders so you know exactly which folder is set as the spam folder. Then find this folder in Outlook and check to see if the "Recover from Spam" button appears. If it doesn't, then please send us a copy of your most recent log file. The troubleshooting guide explains where to find this. =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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RE: [Spambayes] not working
by Tony Meyer June 30, 2004

June 30, 2004

> My spambayes seems to simply not be working. > What gives? I can't send spam suspects to the > eternity and I can't rescue good email in the > spam suspects area. Do I need to reinstall? We need to see your most recent log file (the troubleshooting guide explains where to find the log files) to be able to tell what is wrong. One possible cause is that something has happened to the database. If that is the case, then retraining from scratch would solve the problem. =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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RE: [Spambayes] (no subject)
by Tony Meyer June 30, 2004

June 30, 2004

> Do the version upgrades improve on the programs > ability to detect Spam (not that it needs improvement) > or is it just to add additional features and fix bugs? It depends on the update. The best way to tell is to read the little announcement email (the one that gets posted to spambayes-announce and sometimes here) and if there are changes to the scoring system it'll say so. The last few releases have been building up to a proper "1.0" release, so have only had bug fixes (and really minor ones at that). The next release will be 1.0 and (unless something pops up in the next few days) will be exactly the same as 1.0rc2. After that things will settle down somewhat, and be more predicable. Any 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3 (etc) releases will *only* contain bug fixes. It's possible that a bug fix could improve the scoring, but unlikely. The first 1.1 release (1.1a1, probably) will definitely have new features, and some of those could make improvements to the scoring. Two other points (in a rather long version of the "it depends" answer): 1. There are some experimental features that are disabled by default in the recent versions. These are experimental because we're not sure whether they are good across the majority of mail streams, though we are sure that they are good in some cases. You can (with the Outlook plug-in or sb_server, or whatever) enable one or more of these, and that might improve detection. Or it might make it worse. Either way, it's easy to turn on or off (although to get the full benefit will require retraining with many of them). 2. It's likely that the biggest gains to be made are in finding effective training techniques. While we plan to make it easier to use different methods with the various SpamBayes applications, you can experiment with different ways of training with the existing releases, if you want to. Hope this helps! =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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RE: [Spambayes] Cloning Spambayes
by Tony Meyer June 30, 2004

June 30, 2004

> I have used Spambayes since early this year. I am setting up > a new workstation and want to clone the spam rules from the > old one, to avoid retraining - how do I do this? The 'rules' (the token counts) are stored in the default_bayes_database.db file in your data directory. To just copy these over, copy this file and the default_message_database.db file to the appropriate place on the new machine. There is a file called either {profilename}.ini or Outlook.ini there as well - this has your configuration (which folders you are watching and so on). Copying this one as well *might* work (particularly if all your folders are on an Exchange server), but it's probably easiest to reconfigure from scratch on the new machine. The FAQ & troubleshooting guide both explain where to find the data directory. =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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