It’s News to Me

PopFile Report, originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

Spam is a pain. That, I know, is not news. However, the pain of it can be lessened. The way I deal with it is by using a program called PopFile, which is pictured above. If you’d like to see a much larger version of the image, click here. The program is open source and free and available from Source Forge.

I last reset my statistics for this program on May 15, 2004, and since that time, it has accurately classified the messages I receive as either spam or personal in 99.85% of the cases.

If you’ll note in the picture, I have the “Subject Header Modification” turned ON for the messages it classifies as SPAM (designated in the image by the left-facing red arrow), and I then filter mail in my email program so that all messages that have that word in the subject go to a folder that is called, not surprisingly, “Spam.” That way, I don’t have to deal with them in my inbox.

Periodically throughout the day, I quickly review what is in that folder to check for any “false positives,” of which there are occasionally but not very often a few. I delete those accurately classified as Spam and correct the classification of any false positives. Reclassifying false positives helps the program “to learn” what is and what is not spam.

I have found this solution to the problem of spam to be quite satisfactory for me, and if you are beset by spam and looking for a solution, I’d recommend you give this one a try.