Looking for good spam filter plug-in for MAIL.

MAIL's junk mail filter a disappointment.

[ron_ron]

I am looking for a good spam filter I can plug-in to Apple's MAIL. Has anyone used SpamSieve or POPfile? Or any others?

[whoisgregg]

I'm using SpamSieve right now, here's my vital stats for the last month for one of my work accounts:

Filtered Mail 158 Good Messages, 5826 Spam Messages (97%), 161 Spam Messages Per Day

SpamSieve Accuracy 18 False Positives, 69 False Negatives (79%), 98.5% Correct

Showing Statistics Since 9/21/04 2:21 PM

I am VERY pleased. :D

[ron_ron]

Thanks for the info. I heard that POPFile is also very good but it requires Terminal to install. Has anyone on this board used POPFile with MAIL? I asked Paul Graham about a filter for Mac and he agreed that POPFile was good.

[ron_ron]

I tried to install POPFile but didn't get very far. My UNIX skills are quite limited and I found the product hard to install. So I downloaded SpamSieve and am so far very pleased. It was easy to install and easy to learn. Only time will tell but I think I am going to like it.

[whoisgregg]

Couple things it took me a while to learn about SpamSieve but would have liked to know about:

1. You don't need to start the app, it will automatically do so when Mail.app needs it.
2. If you don't want SpamSieve to appear in the dock, you can fix that with by going into the package contents and editing the info.plist file.

<key>LSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>

1 = do not show in dock
0 = show in dock

[ron_ron]

Thanks for the tip. What I am mostly trying to do now is get it trained. One thing I don't like about it is that when you mark a false positive as "good," it automatically moves the message to the inbox. It would be really cool if it would first go through your other mail rules. Most of my mail rules are used to move messges to their appropriate mailbox. For example, a mail from abc.com goes into the ABC box. However, if I were to move my SpamSieve mail rule to a position lower than the rest of them, losts of spam would bypass the SpamSieve filter and go directly to various mailboxes.

[whoisgregg]

I've noticed that same issue, I think the author was trying to match the behavior of Mail.app's junk box "This is not junk mail" button, which also returns the message to the inbox. My initial dismay was tempered by the realization that once the app was trained properly, I would need to correct it's not-too-smart movement of user-flagged emails much less frequently.

[stormy]

One more vote for SpamSieve. Its filtering has gotten better with the more recent versions too, and the author has been very responsive with support issues.

It's vital to have it properly trained. After a while, it will get very close to 100% accuracy. I use it to filter out some Windows viruses too!

[macdave]

Another vote here for SpamSieve. I've been using it for over a year and it's been nothing short of a lifesaver. Accuracy is up to just under 99% and false positives are almost non-existent. Give the training some time and I think you'll be very pleased. It's interesting (in a really geeky sort of way) to see the application learn about various types of spam and become more confident in its assessments over time.

[lak12]

Hey guys and gals!
I have to say this. I switched to Mac OS X in May 2004. I was actually aiming for that for 3 months doing my research and Mac had to offer more than I have bargained for!
I run Apache, Perl and Berkeley DB. My G5 PowerMac does the following:
Sifts through the email and cuts-off ALL the spam!
Runs autoresponders
Manages 27 web servers on the Internet by itself (daily updates, logs clearing, triggering the events etc.)
Runs a Happy Birthday database for all my friends and notifies me of upcoming ones. It also sends ePostcards.
Checks for the temperature in the house, lights, water pump in the well, runs security cameras

To list all the things - I'll probably take-up too much space here.
Never mind that I am using it as a workstation as well.
I got G5 1.6Ghz single PowerMac with 80Gb HDD and 2.256 Gb RAM, Superdrive
It's hooked-up to a cable modem VIA network and VoIP routers.
Cheers.
Mark