[Spambayes] VERY confusing...

[Skip Montanaro]

(Please keep spambayes at python.org in the cc list so you get the benefit of
more eyeballs and neurons.  I'm also adding spambayes-dev to the cc list to
generate input on whether we should be doing something to fool virus
scanners.)

    Bethanie> I have version 4 and to be frank I don't have a clue as to
    Bethanie> what I may have done after installing it...all I know is that
    Bethanie> Norton halts the mail because of spam(and this only began 5
    Bethanie> days ago) and yes when I turn off Norton email scanning my
    Bethanie> mail comes through fine. I want virus scanning though!

Version 4.  Hmmm...  The latest version of the Spambayes distribution is
1.0a9 which includes version 0.4 of the POP3 Proxy.  I'll assume that's what
you mean.  Interacting with virus scanners can be a pain.  Norton may be
snatching the mail out from under the POP3 Proxy's nose when it's not
expecting it, though I thought Tony had some checks in the code to handle
those situations.

    Bethanie> I can go on site and delete the spams from there and then go
    Bethanie> back to OE and download the rest of the mail but that's a
    Bethanie> PITA.

Agreed, that's not the way to go.

    Bethanie> All I did was download spambaye and allow it to install and
    Bethanie> then I attempted to configure it. I use Comcast cable a Pop3
    Bethanie> server btw.

Can you let us know what your configuration settings are?  In particular, I
wonder what the "cache messages" setting on http://localhost:8880/config is
set to.  Unfortunately, if you don't let it cache messages you can't train
on them.  If you do disable that setting can you receive mail with Norton
enabled?

I'm not a Windows or Norton user (nor do I use the POP3 proxy very often).
Is it possible to tell Norton to be a bit more selective about the folders
it scans?

Another possibility - more for Tony Meyer's eyes - is to consider
obfuscating the cached messages so they don't look like virus candidates to
Norton.  Perhaps perform a simple rot-128 of the contents of the messages or
xor them with a known string before writing them, or write them gzipped.
Anything which you can fairly easily reverse when reading them but which
will defang them enough to fool Norton.

Skip