SpamPal Manual: Client Setup for POPTray

This page gives instructions on installing and setting-up SpamPal for use with PopTray which will let you preview your email on your ISP's server, much like MailWasher, except it's completely free and Open Source.

Quick Index

1. Install SpamPal

2. Configure SpamPal

3. Configure your email program
3.1 Change your POP3 settings
3.2 Change your IMAP4 Settings
3.3 Change your SMTP settings
3.4 Create Filter/Message rules

4. Email Virus Scanners and Firewalls

5. Whitelist friends and contacts

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1. Install SpamPal

Start installation by double-clicking on the SpamPal Setup program (spampal.exe) and follow the on-screen instructions. Upon completion, SpamPal will run, showing its pink umbrella icon in your system tray.

If this installation is an upgrade of SpamPal then the existing configuration of POPTray is retained and the process is now complete. If not, i.e. this is a new installation of SpamPal, proceed with the steps below.

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All you need to know about extra configuration can be found here

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Now you have set up SpamPal, you need to tell your email program to fetch your mail through the SpamPal proxy rather than directly from your ISP.

You need to how you collect mail from your ISP, for example, if you use POP3 to collect your mail then your only need to change your POP3 settings.

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3.1 Change your POP3 settings

Select Options by right clicking on POPTray's systray icon and then select the Accounts tab

Now, write down the name of your POP Server in the Server box (e.g..pop3.yourisp.com) and then replace this with 127.0.0.1

Now add an @ symbol and the POP Server name that you wrote down earlier, to the Login box
(e.g.. my_login_name@pop3.yourisp.com)

Screen after changes:

Note 1: if you got the message about SpamPal not being able to use the standard POP3 port...

You may, at this point, get an error message about SpamPal not being able to listen on the standard POP3 port.This is nothing to be worried about; just write down the port number SpamPal tells you and continue with this guide

This message means SpamPal is using Port 1110 instead of 110. You don't have to put it into SpamPal because SpamPal already knows it is using port 110. Instead, you have to tell your email program to use port 1110 instead of 110.

Note 2: If the server name already is localhost

Don't worry; just add @localhost to the username and leave the server name as is

Note 3: If your POP3 username already contains an @

continue regardless; SpamPal copes with usernames that contain two @s without difficulty.

Before Using SpamPal	After Using SpamPal
Example 1
Incoming POP3 Server Name: pop3.yourisp.com	Incoming POP3 Server Name: localhost
Username: name@surname	Username:name@surname@pop3.yourisp.com
Example 2
Incoming POP3 Server Name: mail.yourisp.com	Incoming POP3 Server Name: 127.0.0.1
Username: my_login_name	Username: my_login_name@mail.yourisp.com
Example 3 (using LAN IP Address)
Incoming POP3 Server Name: 192.168.1.1	Incoming POP3 Server Name: 127.0.0.1
Username: my_login_name	Username: my_login_name@192.168.1.1

Note 4: Server names

The above Incoming POP3 Server Name, can be called: Incoming Mail Server, POP3 server, POP3 Username or Account Name depending on your email program.

There are also two ways of specifying the local server name, which should mean exactly the same thing (but on some system only one of them will work): localhost or 127.0.0.1

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POPTray cannot use IMAP4

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3.3 Changing your SMTP settings

POPTray cannot use SMTP

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3.4 Create Filter/Message Rules

You now need to setup a rule in POPTray to automatically highlight/process the SpamPal-marked messages so that you can more easily review them.

Select Options by right clicking on POPTray's systray icon and then select the Rules tab

You should now click Add Rule and then setup your filter to look like the screen seen below:

Note

You could also tick the Delete from server option, which would delete the Spam tagged message automatically

Now click the Save Rule button.

So with the above rule setup, when you check your mail POPTray should now highlight the SpamPal marked messages with a red SPAM icon:

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4. Email Virus Scanners & Firewalls

Specific instructions for using a variety of email virus scanners with SpamPal can be found on the main installation page

Some email virus filters want to sit between your mail program and your mail server in just the way that SpamPal 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 SpamPal rather than directly from your mailserver, and then your email program fetches the mail through the virus filter.

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5. Whitelist Friends and Contacts

In order to speed up the processing of your emails and to prevent SpamPal from marking your friends or contact's emails as spam, it's a good idea at this point to whitelist all your important email addresses.

This can be done in four ways:

a) Use the pop3 automatic whitelist: this will whitelist non-spam email's that you receive on a frequent basis
b) Use the smtp automatic whitelist: which (if setup in 3.3) will whitelist all email addresses that you send out

Note 1: Privacy: smtp automatic whitelist

If you are using this, especially in a business, as this is recording all outgoing addresses, some people might view this as an infringement upon their privacy, (if you are in UK you need to tell staff of this policy before you start collecting data)

c) use the Add to Whitelist option on SpamPal's system tray: to manually whitelist your email addresses by typing in an address (or by using the dropdown box; to select from a list of recently received address):

d) Use the SpamPal Whitelist Email Addresses page to manually whitelist your email addresses:

Note 2: Headers that the whitelist compares against

The whitelist function only looks for email addresses in certain headers of your email.

These headers are currently: From:, Reply-To:, Sender:, Mailing-List: and Return-Path:

Initially, you will notice that using SpamPal makes fetching your email a little slower. This is because SpamPal has to check everything against the DNSBL lists (Public Blacklists) to see what email's are from a spammer and which aren't.

However, through it's Auto-Whitelist feature(s), SpamPal will quickly learn about the people and machines that send you lots of email, and adds them to a list of trusted senders. Because they're trusted, SpamPal doesn't waste time any checking the DNSBL lists (Public Blacklists) for them and so the more you use SpamPal, the quicker it will get.

There are more hints and tip on how to optimise SpamPal here

This completes the installation and setup.

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