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How to Get Rid of SPAM in Paperboy!
Its an inevitable short-coming of internet mail that anyone anywhere can send you mail, and some will whether you want them to or not. Spammers are a voracious lot, and on occassion may find your list management address posted on the internet (if its not posted anywhere, how would your subscribers find you?). Once they have found you, your inbox can become flooded with trash email to help you loose weight or invest in nigerian oil rights. The problem in Paperboy is these trash emails can become a hassle when trying to service user requests to subscribe and unsubscribe.The best and easiest (as well as free!) tool found so far to help rid oneself of dreaded unsolicited email (aka SPAM), is James Farmer's "SpamPal". What is SpamPal? In the author's words "SpamPal is a mail classification program that can help separate your spam from the mail you really want to read". More specifically, SpamPal works as a proxy between your email program (such as Paperboy) and your POP3 server. SpamPal scans all incoming messages for telltale signs of being SPAM. Messages designated as SPAM will be tagged by SpamPal by inserting "**SPAM**" in the subject line of the incoming mail. SpamPal does not filter incoming mail in any other way, it will be up to us to configure Paperboy to deal with messages tagged by SpamPal. Email messages can be flagged as SPAM in any number of ways such as point-of-origin and contents. In the context of this tutorial we will only cover simple point-of-origin filtering. You are encourged to visit http://www.spampal.org/ to learn more about SpamPal and its more advanced configuration.
Please read this tutorial in its entirety before beginning.
View all steps
| STEP 1: Install SpamPal |
If you haven't done so yet, download and install a copy of spampal from http://www.spampal.org/. The setup is pretty straight-forward and (most) defaults will suit our needs. |
| STEP 2: Select "Safe" Filtering |
As noted in the install dialog, SpamPal has different levels of filtering. The more "agressive" the filtering, the more SPAM is caught as well as the more likely that legitimate email will be marked as SPAM. For our needs, we will start with "safe" filtering. "Safe" filtrering is stilll rather effective, and none of your subscribers email should be interfered with this way. |
| STEP 3: Ensure SpamPal's Page Tagging |
In SpamPal's options, ensure that "Mark subject lines of spam messages" is checked and that the "with" field is filled in ("**SPAM**" by default). Please note, if you change the "with" field to anything other than "**SPAM**", you will need to alter Paperboy's trigger in STEP 4. |
| STEP 4: Test Paperboy's Triggers |
Paperboy has by default, a rule named "SPAM". This rule is setup specifically to catch email flagged as SPAM by SpamPal. Select the "SPAM" rule, then select the trigger. By clicking on "Tester" you will launch Paperboy's Regular Expression Tester. Copy the contents of the "with" field from SpamPal into the Test box and select "test" in the Regular Expression Tester. If the result box turns green, the trigger is setup correctly, otherwise, change either the "with" field of SpamPal or the pattern of Paperboy's trigger so they match. |
| STEP 5: Ensure Paperboy's "SPAM" Trigger |
Once the trigger is setup, the rest of the rule can be configured. By default Paperboy is setup to send an artificial "user not found" response so that when SPAM is sent, the returned email will indicate this user is no longer valid. Upon recieving the "user not found" message, the spammer's automated list grooming software generally removes your address from their database. Another strategy would be simply to change the "Action" of Paperboy's "SPAM" rule to "Delete" to delete the incoming message so that you will never even see it. |
| STEP 6: Configure Paperboy's POP3 Settings |
Now that SpamPal knows what to say and Paperboy knows what to listen for, all we need to do is get them to talk to each other. In Paperboy's "POP3 Server" settings, change the server value to "127.0.0.1", this is a special address that says to look at the local machine (where SpamPal is installed). Second, if SpamPal is setup to use a port other than 110, change the port to match the port in SpamPal, this step is usually not necessary. Lastly, change the "User" to be Make sure to consult your current, correct and working settings. |
It should be noted that neither James Farmer nor SpamPal are affiliated with IPWorx.com in any way and do not necessarily advocate the use of SpamPal with Paperboy. Also, while endorsing the use of SpamPal with Paperboy as well as with your own personal email clients, IPWorx.com can not endeavor to support the use of SpamPal as a third party tool. This tutorial should be considered the limits of support for SpamPal with Paperboy.