Kmail filters - do they work?!
 

About 50-70% of my mail these days seems to be spam. On a friend's advice, when signing up for a couple of things I actually used a "false" address to see where this s**t might be coming from.

So, sure enough I signed up as mp3@apostrophe.co.uk (guess what that was for! ;-) and now I get huge amounts of spam for that address.

In K mail, I've gone to Settings|Configure POP filters and set upfilter criterea as follows:

Match Any Of The Following radio button is selected

The rule is:

To (Drop down box selected) Equals (Drop down box selected) mp3@apostrophe.co.uk (entered by myself)

The Filter action is set as Delete Mail From Server (radio button).

Looks fine, but does nothing at all in the way of filtering!

Is this down to a bug or have I missed something?

Cheers,

Rob.

I don't like pop3, so never touch it, but pop3 downloads form the server and then normally removes the mail unless you explicitly tell it to leave it there, I would think that your filter is basically irrelevant, it doesn't say "delete locally" or "don't download"...

>> I don't like pop3, so never touch it, but pop3 downloads form the server and then normally removes the mail unless you explicitly tell it to leave it there, I would think that your filter is basically irrelevant, it doesn't say "delete locally" or "don't download"... <<

The filter says "Delete Mail From Server". To me that says, just delete it from the server, rather than download and then delete which is what it [kmail] would normally do.

What's not to like about POP3, btw?

Mailfilter will do exactly what you want, if Kmail doesn't - http://freshmeat.net/releases/119414/

I have used the filters in Kmail and they work great. I did it by email address. After a few days 99% of the spam was being sent to the deleted items folder.

"The filter says "Delete Mail From Server". To me that says, just delete it from the server, rather than download and then delete which is what it [kmail] would normally do. "

This means that it deletes the mail when it downloads it to your PC. If you uncheck it it will leave the mail on the mail server after to download it.

>> I have used the filters in Kmail and they work great. I did it by email address <<

I've kind of managed to do it using the filters rather than the POP3 filers. I can send mails to "mp3@apostrophe.co.uk" directly to the trash directory! I guess that'll do. :-)

Thanks to you all for your suggestions.

Mailfilter deletes them from the server, directly, without downloading them first.

[root@localhost joe]# mailfilter
mailfilter: Error: The rcfile for preferences (usually $HOME/.mailfilterrc) could not be read.
[root@localhost joe]#


any ideas anyone,
thanks,
AD

You need to create a .mailfilterrc file in your home directory, which has permissions set so that you can read it. There is a sample one included with the app.

( PS - is it a good idea to collect mail when logged in as root?)

duhhh the man file and faq was right infront of me.

thanks,
AD

since i am either to stupid or sleep deprivated to figure how to get cron to schedule mailfilter to run every hour i figured a way around it. i know its kinda cheezy but it works for me. here it goes for anyone that wants mailfinder to filter automatically for them:

something that is kinda cool i found that works with mailfilter is kappfinder. every time kappfinder checks for my mail on the remote server i specified my "mail fetch/check program" to be mailfinder. it shows for a few seconds though that i have 29 messages in my inbox but there really is none. it filters my mail every time i get a new message. damed this would be a great idea if gkrellm integrated something like mailfilter natively.

im a geniussss-thssssss so the "ice age" sloth said :)

i don't like pop3 as it downloads all the emails to a local file, which sucks ass. it's good if you're conencting to a very remote server on a duff connection, but it doesn't compare to keeping all emails in once place on a single server like imap does.

>> i don't like pop3 as it downloads all the emails to a local file, which sucks ass. it's good if you're conencting to a very remote server on a duff connection, but it doesn't compare to keeping all emails in once place on a single server like imap does. <<

I don't follow, old boy. What's so bad about downloading all mails to a local file?

"Sucks ass"?! Wrapping my lips round long eared quadrupeds always works for me. ;-)

As Kmail does not render HTML mails unless you ask it to, I found that you can filter the sites in the links the spammers put in. You'll find the same ones crop up time and again, despite all the different sender e-mails and new ways of spelling words they think of.

So if the raw html contains an address such as:www.pornpest.com then put in a filter for Message Contains pornpest.com and then set the actions to (1) bounce (2) move to trash.

You will also need to set up a filter so that if the Subject reads "mail failed, returning to sender" it will be passed to Trash, and under Options, apply it to Sent Messages only. This way your bounces won't end up in your Sent Items box.

The other thing is that you have to select files before applying any new filters you set up, which is done on a "per box" basis by simply pressing "K" before clicking on the Apply Filter icon.

DAVE