AntiSpam3

Version 2 of AntiSpam is deprecated by now. Please use the new version 3.0.
We leave this page here just for historical reasons.

Installation

1. Manual installation

The following works for a multiuser installation of Pegasus Mail.

1. Download program files [zip; 213 KB].
2. Close PMail, if open.
3. Copy or move AntiSpam.dll and AntiSpam.bmp (the icon) to the directory where winpm-32.exe can be found.
4. Copy/move AntiSpam.fff and AntiSpam*.txt in (a) user mailbox directory(ies).
5. When starting PMail with the user name, a new button should appear.

2. Automatic installation

The following works for a single or multiuser installation of Pegasus Mail.

1. Download program files and setup utility [self-extracting archive; 430 KB].
2. Use the setup utility.

3. Uninstallation

Either use setup.exe (the same program used for automatic installation) or just delete all files called AntiSpam*.* from the pmail user und program directories.
There are no registry entries, no files in other directories or any other annoying stuff.

Instructions for use

When you received unsolicited mail ...

1. Start the extension by clicking on the button or select Tools|Extensions|AntiSpam from the menu.
2. Drag&drop spam mail(s) from any folder on the extension's window.
3. Complaints will be created by extracting email addresses/domains from the original mail; the complaints use the service of http://spam.abuse.net.
   If you are not yet registered at abuse.net and you use AntiSpam for the first time, you get a message from abuse.net where you are asked to register (with detail information how to do this).

You can also drag&drop mails on the extension window that came back because the recipient's email address/domain doesn't exist. It will be added to the so called domain filter, so that no more complaint mails are written to this domain.

Please be careful when you use AntiSpam: Never use it with "normal" messages or messages from mailing lists you are subscribed to.

Source code and the copyright thing

AntiSpam was written in Delphi 4. Developers who are interested in an example of writing an Pegasus Mail extension using Delphi or who just want to test or improve the extension can download the source code [zip; 30 KB].

The extension and the source code are free and they will be free forever. But of course there is no warranty ...; everything is provided "as-is". Test reports (success and failures ;-)) and (ideas for) improvements are welcome.

Questions about AntiSpam

• "The drag&drop thing is not the way I'd have coded the user interface of such an extension. Why don't you do it this way: 'Handle' the selected message when the user pushes the AntiSpam button?"

  Pegasus Mail provides an interface for the "communication" of an extension with the program (receiving informations about messages or sending messages for example). We found no way to get the content of a message through this interfaces without drag&drop.
  For experts: This is true for the "composer" type of extensions (which we used for AntiSpam).

• "The 'Delete message after Ok' ist grayed. Why?"

  The interface Pegasus Mail provides for extensions does not provide a function that deletes messages. We could delete the message file directly from the harddisc (AntiSpam 1 did this), but this was not "gentle(wo)man - like". AntiSpam2 communicates only through the interface from Pegasus Mail.

• "It should be possible to edit the complaint text in the right window before sending the mail."

  We are not sure about that possibility; there are cases where some corrections can be useful (e.g. remove attachments or X-headers that contain personal informations) but in general the headers should stay "original". We will further consider this issue when planning the next release.

• "The extension always adds the default signature. Is it possible to add no or a specified signature by default or to choose the signature on a mail per mail base?"

  Interesting idea. We will consider a more intelligent signature handling for the next version

• "Is it possible to have the last chosen response text as a default for the next mail"

  Technically that would be possible but we don't really like the idea. As an alternative we suggest to use the possibility of defining the order of the response templates in the pull down by giving the text files adequate names: AntiSpamComplain0.txt, AntiSpamComplain1.txt, ...

• "The readme in the zip-archive is not very informative ..."

  That's true. Maybe we'll change it for the next version. Until that time you hopefully find all necessary information on this web page.

• "setup.exe doesn't work under Windows 2000"

  Sorry for that but we have no possibility to test it and therefore we cannot do anything about it. We recommend to use the manual installation. If some programmer out there is eager to port the setup routine to W2K we would welcome that effort ...

• "What can I do to use the extension with a non-english version of PMail?"

  You have to change the extension of the form fact file; for the german version it would be AntiSpam.fde instead of AntiSpam.fff.

• "When do you plan to release the next version of AntiSpam?"
  • We decided to wait for PMail 4.0 because David Harris has announced that the interface for the plugin handling will be different so we'll have to do some coding anyway ...
  • Update: In version 4.01 there is no change of the plugin interface so we'll wait a little longer until we overhaul AntiSpam.
  • Update: We've started working on AntiSpam3 (this time in C++); it's fun and we'll release it as soon as it's finished ;-)
  • Update: We're still working on AntiSpam3, have implemented some of the wishes from above, it's still fun - and we are glad that it works again with the new 4.11 release. - And the first test release will follow soon!