[Spambayes] SpamBayes questions

[Neville Franks]

Hi Tony,

Monday, May 12, 2003, 2:07:07 PM, you wrote:

>> In particular can you access the Web 
>> interface from your local PC when SpamBayes is running on a remote 
>> server.

MT> If you set the "html_ui":"allow_remote_connections" option to True (it
MT> defaults to False), then yes.  It depends on the setup, but you might
MT> want to alter it first, though.  As it is, this would mean that anyone
MT> could connect to that server and access the interface.  You could simply
MT> put it in a protected (htaccess, for example) directory, or you could
MT> build in some sort of authentication.  (IIRC, there is a feature request
MT> for this.)

Thanks for that. Right now and for the foreseeable future I am running
SB locally, because of the Python version problem on my Web host.

>> What I would really like to see is a way to skip downloading email 
>> flagged as spam. Maybe something as simple as using a different pop3 
>> port which only gets ham. Or the option to redirect all spam to 
>> specified email account, which I could then check when I have my 
>> normal broadband connection available.

MT> As Mark said, this is tricky because the classifier needs access to the
MT> mail to do its thing.  Are you intending this for a single user, or
MT> multiple users?  The FAQ has an answer about setting up Spambayes for
MT> multiple users (basically that it's possible, but we don't have
MT> documentation for it).  If it's for a single user, and the proxy is
MT> running on the remote server, then that shouldn't be a problem.

MT> It wouldn't be difficult to modify pop3proxy so that it didn't deliver
MT> spam (you could then run this on a separate port).  (Redirecting would
MT> also be possible, but much more work).  I suspect that you could add
MT> this before line 462 of pop3proxy:
MT>         if msg.GetClassification() == options["Hammie",
MT> "header_spam_string":
MT>                 return ok + "\n.\r\n"

MT> This is *completely* untested, but it should mean that for all messages
MT> classified as spam an empty message is returned.  (It would be simple
MT> enough to tweak so that you just got the headers, or something like
MT> that).  The full message would be added to the cache so you could review
MT> (and re-classify) it via the web interface.

MT> If you don't want to do any coding, but you do want to try this [1],
MT> then I'm happy to put together a patch.  Just let me know what behaviour
MT> you want it to have.  (I suspect it should really have the ability to
MT> 'resend' a message that you identify as a false positive, for example).

I have approx. 6 @getsoft.com I want to filter, and possibly some
others. Seeing I only discovered Spambayes yesterday and installed it
today, I really don't have much of an understanding how it goes about
doing what it does.

Typically my email client is setup to delete mail as it downloads it.
Is it feasible to have a mode/setting which says don't pass spam on to
the email client and also don't delete it from the mail server.
If the email client never sees the spam in this special mode then it
won't delete it and it will just sit there. Ideally this "mode" could
be set by the Web interface. I could still use WebMail to look at the
mail back on the server if I really wanted to.

I really appreciate your quick response and willingness to help. Kudos
to all those involved in this project.

-- 
Best regards,
 Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows - the programmers editor, an indispensable tool for great software development.
  http://www.getsoft.com Version 4.02 now available. New: Projects, Source Database, Difference Analysis....