2. Installation
SpamSpector requires a little bit of work to set up, but this shouldn't take more than ten minutes and once completed you can almost forget it's there.
If you get stuck, then you can ask for help in the SpamSpector discussion forums.
Step One: Install the SpamSpector program
Start installation by double-clicking on the SpamSpector Setup program as usual. You will be asked the usual questions about where you want it to install and where you want it placed in the Start menu; if you don't want to change them then the default settings will be okay. Once SpamSpector is installed, it will launch itself and run in your system tray.
If you are upgrading from a previous release of SpamSpector then this will be all you have to do; otherwise there are a couple more steps...
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You may at this point get an error message about SpamSpector not being able to listen on the standard POP3 port. This is nothing to be worried about; just write down the port number SpamSpector tells you and continue. |
Step Two: Configure your mail program to use SpamSpector
Now you have set up SpamSpector, you need to tell your mail program to fetch your mail through SpamSpector rather than directly from your ISP. If your mailers are one of the following mailers:
- Outlook
- Outlook Express
- The Bat
- Eudora
- Incredimail
If not, you will need to change the following two settings in your mail program's configuration:
- "Incoming Mail Server" or "POP3 server".
- "POP3 Username" or "Account Name".
Locate both of them to start with, and make a note of their values. Now you need to add the "POP3 server" to the "Username" field, separating the two values with an @ symbol. For example, if your username is "jjf" and your POP3 server is "pop.clara.net", you should change your username to:
jjf@pop.clara.net
| If your POP3 username already contains an @ |
| Just continue as if it didn't; SpamSpector is able to cope with usernames that contain two @s without difficulty. |
| If your POP3 server doesn't use the default POP3 port (110)... |
| Append the port number to the server name in the "login name" field using a colon. For example, if BlueYonder ran their POP3 server on port 8090, I'd end up with a login name of jf004d7582@pop3.blueyonder.co.uk:8090 |
Users of Netscape should use a '%' symbol instead of a '@', ie "jjf%pop.clara.net". People using elderly versions of other mail programs may also need to use a '%' sign.
Now change the "POP3 server" setting to "localhost" (without the quotes). If your mail program complains about that, try "127.0.0.1".
| If SpamSpector previous complained about having to use a non-standard POP3 port... |
| You will have to change the port your mail program makes the POP3 connection on. The way of doing this will differ for each mail client, but it should be somewhere near where you set the name of the POP3 server, perhaps in an "Advanced" tab? Change this to the value you wrote down earlier. |
Now try to check your mailbox; if you don't get any errors, continue to the next step. If you get an error from your mail program, check that you've configured the incoming POP3 server to "localhost" and, if necessary, that the port has been set right.
If you have more than one POP3 mailbox, repeat this step for each of them.
Step Three: Setup mail filters
Finally, you need to set up a mail filter to filter anything SpamSpector thinks is spam to another folder.
Start by creating this folder; you can call it anything you like, but for the purposes of this document I'll assume you've called it spamtrap. Exactly how you create a folder will depend upon your mail program.
Now create a new filter to filter any incoming mail for which the header X-SpamSpector: contains SPAM into the spamtrap folder. Again, exactly how to do this will depend upon your mail program. (If your mail client doesn't allow filtering on arbitrary headers, then filtering for subject lines containing **SPAM** will have the same effect.)
And that's it!
Addendum: Using SpamSpector with email virus scanners
Some email virus filters want to sit between your mail program and your mail server in just the way that SpamSpector does. There's actually no reason why they can't; you just have them up in serial so that your virus filter fetches its mail through SpamSpector rather than directly from your mailserver, and then your email program fetches the mail through the virus filter.
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