E-mail Spam Protection for POP mail accounts/clients
The solution I’m about to suggest will cost you nothing - since SpamAssasin is a open-source mail filter for spam.
In my situation, I’m very dependent on using POP mail accounts as I do archive my mails and I’ve always been a user of MS Outlook. Sometime ago, when I was facing a scary amount of spam coming in thru my mailboxes (yeah I have lotsa mail accounts, separated by its use like work, personal, support, etc), I decided to look for a good spam protection filter for Outlook.
Based on Yeh Ern’s recommendation, I tried out Cloudmark’s SpamNet. It’s a very good solution to my luncheon meat problem but alas, they started charging for it not too long ago, then my copy of SpamNet had expired. I ain’t gonna pay a monthly fee to continue using it - hey! I was contributing back to the SpamNet’s community by flagging spam mails that didn’t get filtered!
I then looked into a few commercial spam filter products but they didn’t work as well as SpamNet, unfortunately. 
During this time, all the while the mail accounts on my server (that runs on Linux with CPanel - that hosts this site as well) is protected at the server side with SpamAssasin. So I wasn’t really having spam control problems with these mail accounts. The one that I was frustrated about is from my maxisnet account.
Having banked on the relatively good experience and success in combating spam with SpamAssasin, I looked with high hopes of a filter that works with Outlook. But unfortunately there was none.
However, I found out that there’s a POP server proxy that acts as the middleman that collects the mail from the mail server, filters it with SpamAssasin and then funnels it back to the mail client. And it blardy works with Windows and Outlook! Yay! 
What is needed is only:
- ActivePerl - to add support for Perl scripting on Windows platform
- SpamAssasin - the open-source mail filter
- POP3Proxy - the proxy server that uses SpamAssasin and runs on Perl
Installation details can be found on the POP3Proxy website but bear in mind, this is not for the faint-hearted or technologically-challenged. Should you need help in setting it up, don’t hesitate to e-mail me 
Wishing you a spam-free mailbox… after all, luncheon meats should only belong to lunchboxes and not mailboxes
September 20th, 2003 at 1:54 am
does the software download first then filter? or filter at server site?
to deal with spam mails, i use mailwasher(freeware). It delete spam mails at server side, save the time to download spams.
to have accurate SpamAssasin filter result, you need to ‘teach’ it. It will be very clever after a short teaching time
September 20th, 2003 at 3:42 am
as far i know, SpamAssasin don’t block spam mails, it just add info at the end of the message whether that mail comply to spesific key word..
September 20th, 2003 at 12:53 pm
try use this, never try myself before. heard it quit good, chris dibona recomment it.
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
yeah, it’s free
September 20th, 2003 at 2:18 pm
I don’t mind having the mails downloaded and marked as Spam (in which I will filter thru Outlook) as there may still be false alarms… so periodically I’ll search thru the Spam folder that filters all marked spam mails for any false…
September 24th, 2003 at 2:13 am
Or you can have fetchmail fetching mails to your mail server in theuseless.com and have spamassasin filter them there. I cron my fetchmail to fetch from 5 different POP servers every 5 minutes or so, and when I click on my mail reader, everything is ready, filtered and downloaded.
September 24th, 2003 at 10:07 am
Thanks for the suggestion starwing but no need liao lur…
My maxisnet’s a/c is due for renewal next month. And considering the percentage of spam I’m getting from that a/c, I’ve decided against renewing it and just gonna let it retire.