http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/ 2026-07-24T08:48:13+00:00 http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/ http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/lib/tpl/getpopfile-org/images/favicon.ico text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:antivirusalarms?rev=1202500160&do=diff Why is POPFile causing alarms in my antivirus program? If you have received a message that contains a virus, it will be stored in your message history. Most modern virus scanners scan email as it comes in and doesn't allow messages containing viruses to be passed on to POPFile or your email client. However, if you have either received messages while your scanner was disabled, or have just installed a new virus scanner and are getting virus warnings about files in your text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:apopandssl?rev=1202500160&do=diff Can I use APOP and SSL together? Yes. You can use APOP and SSL together with POPFile. How to use APOP and SSL together Requirements * Your ISP needs to support APOP authentication and SSL connection. * Your mail client does not need to support APOP authentication or SSL connection. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:apopcompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff Does POPFile support APOP ? Yes. POPFile supports APOP. How to use APOP with POPFile Requirements * Your ISP needs to support APOP authentication. * Your mail client does not need to support APOP authentication How to setup your mail client text/html 2009-04-07T13:54:26+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:bayesandlogs?rev=1239112466&do=diff Bayes Theorem and Logarithms POPFile makes use of Bayes Theorem in the form: P(E|Bi) x P(Bi) P(Bi|E) = --------------- P(E) Where there are n buckets B1 to Bn and there are m words in total W1 to Wm. We want to know for a specific email E which bucket it is most likely to belong to. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:beyondfilters?rev=1202500160&do=diff FAQ: Beyond Filters * What can I do to prevent being spammed? * Where can I learn about spam protection? text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:bounce?rev=1202500160&do=diff Why doesn't POPFile have a 'bounce' function? In short, POPFile users would see little benefit from the addition of this feature. Most spam messages today come with forged From: and Reply-To: headers. Bouncing a message would thus lead to bounces in the inbox of somebody completely innnocent, while the spammer will never know. Here is the story of someone whose email address was used by a spammer: text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:bucketprobability?rev=1202500160&do=diff How do I interpret the bucket probability in the detailed message history view? The probability listings for each bucket are numbered from greatest to least, probability wise. All of the scores from each word that is classified and deemed to belong in a specific bucket are tallied and added up to derive the bucket scores. A probability of 1 (the highest possible score) means that POPFile is quite certain that message belongs in that particular bucket. The numbers below the number 1 bucket are l… text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:changeport?rev=1202500160&do=diff How can I set the port of the real mail server to something other than 110? Just use the username field in your email program and change it to mail.server.com:3110:username if the mail server uses the port 3110 for the connection. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:classvsscore?rev=1202500160&do=diff POPFile classified a message to bucket X, but the probabilities say it should be bucket Y The classification POPFile displays on the history page may differ from the classification you can deduce from the probabilities table displayed below each message in the single message view. This can happen when you have reclassified a similar message after receiving the message in question. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:clearcorpus?rev=1202500160&do=diff How does one erase all knowledge POPFile has? Version 0.20.x or Later Clearing POPFile's buckets is simple, just: * Open the POPFIle UI. * go to the Buckets Page. * Click on a Bucket Name. * Click on remove all words to completely erase a bucket's contents. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:commandline?rev=1202500160&do=diff I'm a command line junky. What are the command line options for POPFile? Although POPFile was primarily designed to be used with the web interface, you can use the command line options as well. Some configurations require command line options as the default may not work in all cases. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:commonheaders?rev=1202500160&do=diff Why are common headers names marked as a specific bucket? You may have noticed that the names of many email headers (Received, Content-Type, Date, Return-Path, Message-Id) that are common to almost all email are most likely found in a certain bucket. This is not a problem even if most of them are considered spam words. In a mature corpus they are not going to be significantly weighted toward any single bucket. Just because a word is colored for a certain bucket doesn't mean it is not used in… text/html 2008-09-14T09:50:52+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:contributing?rev=1221385852&do=diff How can I contribute to POPFile's development? There are a lot of ways to contribute to the effort of making POPFile even better. * You can write documentation. This wiki is a good place to start because it is the central resource for the POPFile documentation and everybody can edit the pages. Even if you are just correcting typos, your contribution is always welcome. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:contributingoverview?rev=1202500160&do=diff FAQ: Contributing to POPFile * How can I contribute to POPFile's development? * How can I contribute to POPFile's documentation? * How can I show support for POPFile and encourage others to use it? or Can I link to POPFile? Are there some Otto Icons arround? text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:corpusunbalance?rev=1202500160&do=diff Is it possible to 'unbalance' your corpus? While the research hasn't been fully conclusive, it does not appear that buckets will become unbalanced as long as you continue training on errors, which seems to be the key. Even users who receive inordinate amounts of one type of mail usually see that POPFile effectively sorts messages with high accuracy even though their word counts aren't evenly distributed among buckets. text/html 2009-10-16T12:43:22+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:cost?rev=1255697002&do=diff How Much Does POPFile Cost? POPFile is, of course, free of cost. If you would like to show your appreciation for POPFile, please donate a few dollars to John Graham-Cumming, the creator of POPFile and be sure to tell your friends about it too! text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:deletehistory?rev=1202500160&do=diff How often should I delete the history? By default POPFile stores only the last two days of messages. Versions of POPFile prior to 0.18.1 run slower as your history grows, so it may be wise to clear the history occasionally to keep POPFile running efficiently or upgrade to 0.18.1 or newer. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:dochelp?rev=1202500160&do=diff How can I help improve POPFile's documentation? POPFile's documentation is in a wiki. A Wiki allows for everyone to contribute to a continual and rapid improvement of documentation. Feel free to add your knowledge to improve the documentation. You can sign up for an account text/html 2008-06-13T13:56:50+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:duplicate?rev=1213365410&do=diff How do I duplicate a fully configured POPFile on another machine? Early versions of POPFile were easy to transfer because everything was stored in the POPFile folder (and its sub-folders). Starting with the 0.21.0 release (9 March 2004), the data files can now be stored separately from the POPFile files when a clean installation is performed. This means it is no longer a simple matter of copying a single folder if you want to transfer your POPFile installation to a new computer. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:duplicatestorage?rev=1202500160&do=diff Why is email being kept both in POPFile and in my email program? Email will show up in POPFile's history (<http://127.0.0.1:8080/history>) and in your email client (e.g. Outlook). The history page in POPFile is only for reclassifying email and any email that is there for two days (by default) or more will automatically be deleted. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:editing_hints?rev=1202500160&do=diff Editing Hints Here are some hints about editing this wiki. Generally, the easiest thing to do is use the toolbar you get when editing a page. Most of the icons should be self-describing, but you will get a tooltip if you hover your mouse over them. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:effectiveness?rev=1202500160&do=diff I like to tinker. Is there a built-in effectiveness test system? Yes, there is an “Automated Test Suite”, however it is currently undocumented and is still being developed. It is not included in the release versions of POPFile. You must download it directly from the text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:emailchecking?rev=1202500160&do=diff Where do you change the settings for how often email is checked? In your email client, e.g. Outlook Express. POPFile doesn't affect anything about how often email is checked. text/html 2008-09-03T18:04:48+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:emailsorting?rev=1220465088&do=diff POPFile is classifying my email, but it just sits in my inbox. Why isn't it going in my spam folder? POPFile cannot move email into a folder in your mail client(e.g. Outlook, Eudora). POPFile will add a marker to your email headers or modify your subject line Subject line modification. In order to sort your email based on POPFile's classification, use your email client's filtering ability to sort the email into a folder. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:falsenegativepostive?rev=1202500160&do=diff What are false negatives and false positives and why are they so important? The statistics about an email filter's effectiveness are built upon the concept of false positives and false negatives. Since POPFile is not a spam filter, but a general email classifier, the meaning of those terms differs in POPFile's context from their meaning in the context of spam filters. text/html 2010-03-02T16:15:06+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:fontsize?rev=1267546506&do=diff How can I make the POPFile UI use a different font size? By default the POPFile UI uses the 'simplyblue' UI skin (even though there is another skin called 'default'). The “Configuration” page in the UI offers 25 other skins, some of which use smaller fonts. text/html 2008-10-13T02:33:04+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:forgotpassword?rev=1223865184&do=diff I forgot my password for POPFile Control Center. How can I reset it? Close down POPFile. Find popfile.cfg. Open it in a text editor. Delete the line html_password XXXX. Restart POPFile. Note: If you cannot find popfile.cfg, see Finding the User Data files. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:generalsummary?rev=1202500160&do=diff FAQ: General POPFile Summary What is POPFile? * What is POPFile? * Was POPFile based on Paul Graham's research? * Why was POPFile written in Perl? How does POPFile Work? * How does POPFile work? * What does POPFile do to the email it receives? * What separates this project from other Naive Bayesian email classifiers? * How good will POPFile work? Cost & Licensing model * How much does POPFile cost? * What license does POPFile use? text/html 2011-09-24T15:44:02+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:getsourcecode?rev=1316879042&do=diff How to obtain the source code Source Code Repository POPFile is an open source project which uses version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. This means all of the source code is freely available. Since POPFile is written in Perl most of the source code is actually shipped with each release. The cross-platform, Mac text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:gettingstarted?rev=1202500160&do=diff Getting Started New users will find everything the need to get started under the HowTos section. Specifically, start either with: * Windows installation or * Cross Platform installation text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:goodstatisticlaratings?rev=1202500160&do=diff What variables affect 'good' statistical ratings? There are a number of ways to achieve high statistical ratings, but they will vary from person to person as we all get different types of email. Here are a few of these: * Bucket Distinction. POPFile works best when your buckets are configured to sort distinctly different types of email. Mail like pure unrequested email (spam) versus an advertisement that you don't want from a retailer you frequent and are on their mailing list is difficult … text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:hangingui?rev=1202500160&do=diff POPFile's UI Hangs Problem: Sometimes when accessing the UI in your browser it may become unresponsive or fire up with a blank screen and just sit there. When it is in this state it may not receive mail either. Solution: As noted in the release notes text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:historycolors?rev=1202500160&do=diff What is the significance of the colors of the words in the history view? Black words are those that are not contained in the corpus. Other colored words match the colors of the bucket they are statistically most related to. text/html 2008-09-14T00:38:38+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:howgood?rev=1221352718&do=diff How good is POPFile? POPFile's accuracy depends on the kind of mail you receive, on the buckets that you let POPFile sort that mail to, and on the amount of training it gets. Your mileage may vary, but take a look at the Global POPFile Statistics. This page is updated daily and reflects the statistics that each installation of POPFile can send back home about its accuracy. text/html 2009-04-07T13:51:40+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:howitworks?rev=1239112300&do=diff How POPFile does email classification POPFile uses a technique called Naive Bayes to calculate the probability that the words in an email mean that that email falls into a specific bucket. A bucket is represented by a collection of words and their frequency. The set of buckets is called the corpus and determines the different buckets that an email can be placed in, the probability of an individual word existing in an email for a specific bucket and the probability of an email being in a bucket… text/html 2009-03-23T20:31:04+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:howmanybuckets?rev=1237840264&do=diff What's the minimum and maximum number of buckets POPFile can support? POPFile must have a minimum of two buckets which, most often, are named spam and allowed or spam and inbox. Note that “unclassified” is not counted as one of the two minimum buckets. text/html 2009-04-06T11:56:34+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:howwork?rev=1239018994&do=diff How does POPFile work? POPFile is a proxy which sits between your mail client and your mail server. Commands generated by your email client are passed through POPFile to the email server. As messages are retrieved, POPFile reads incoming messages, tries to classify them to the categories you have defined and then passes them on to your text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:imapcompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff I know POPFile works with POP3, but does it work with IMAP too? Yes. Altough the POPFile IMAP module is still labeled as “exprimental” it is already successfully used by a number of users. To learn more, go to the IMAP page. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:inthenews?rev=1202500160&do=diff POPFile Articles and Reviews POPFile articles General Resources * POPFile Release History * About.com: Get the Most Out of POPFile * WikiPedia: Bayesian filtering August 2006 * August 7: Spam Cube, Is It Really Worth It? June 2006 * June 29: POPFile: Open-Source Email Solution April 2006 * April 11: Managing Email Spam with POPFile February 2006 * February: Interview with John Graham-Cumming (in French) January 2006 * January 31: InternetNews.com: From Spam … text/html 2009-11-27T11:23:34+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:ispopfileinfected?rev=1259321014&do=diff Does POPFile contain a virus/trojan/adware ? The Windows installer for POPFile and several of the Windows utilities shipped with POPFile are built using NSIS, the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System. NSIS was SourceForge “Project of the Month” for January 2006 (POPFile was text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:learnmore?rev=1202500160&do=diff Where can I learn about spam protection? A good source of proactive information is JunkBusters, but there are many websites, newsgroups and forums that discuss good spam protection techniques such as Gibson Research's GRC spam forums. A quick Google search will turn up similar sites. text/html 2008-02-09T12:08:46+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:linking?rev=1202558926&do=diff Linking and showing your support for POPFile If you wish to share your enthusiasm for POPFile with others, you can add a link to your web site! There are also various sizes of "Otto" the POPFile mascot for you to proudly display on your web site. A link to a popfile would look like this: text/html 2009-10-15T20:49:24+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:liscense?rev=1255639764&do=diff What license does POPFile use? POPFile is free software, licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL). text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:lotusnotesexchangecompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff Is POPFile compatible with Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange? Yes, POPFile is compatible with Lotus Notes. Please read the Howtos section for more information on this. Unfortunately due to the design of Exchange, POPFile does not support it natively at this time. There is however an extension program called text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:mailwasherprocompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff MailWasher Pro & POPFile Yes. See the MailWasher Pro wiki for details. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:mergebuckets?rev=1202500160&do=diff Merging Buckets There is currently no built in method or utility to merge buckets. Technically it would not be difficult to program (especially using XMLRPC), but no one can agree on the correct way to handle merging scores for words that appear in both buckets. No matter how they are merged some words may be over weighted for the merged bucket compared to the other remaining buckets and could cause missclassifications. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:messageorder?rev=1202500160&do=diff What order are the messages sorted in? Messages in history are sorted in descending order by the date and time they were received by POPFile. You may adjust the history view by clicking on one of the column headings (From, Subject, etc.). text/html 2010-08-05T02:07:08+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:multipleclients?rev=1280974028&do=diff Is POPFile designed to work on a server with multiple clients? Yes, POPFile will work on a server with multiple clients, however each of those clients must currently use the same buckets, history and corpus data. Implementation of a multi-user, multi-config system (POPFile 2.x) is under way but the code is not yet ready for production use. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:multiplepopdownloads?rev=1202500160&do=diff Multiple POP Downloads By default on Windows, POPFile can only download mail from one POP account at a time. If your client is attempting to get mail from several POP accounts at the same time, connections must wait their turn. Mail clients wait for a while, but sometimes the connections for the later accounts may timeout before POPFile can get to them. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:multipleservers?rev=1202500160&do=diff Does POPFile support multiple email servers? Yes, POPFile is capable of communicating with multiple email servers and clients. POPFile is typically set up to classify email for any email accounts you access. Normally POPFile will access one email account at a time (as most email clients do as well.) If you need to check multiple accounts simultaneously, you can enable this feature on text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:mylanguage?rev=1202500160&do=diff I speak XXXXX language. Is there a translation for my language? POPFile's user interface was translated to many languages. Currently, the list of available translations includes: * Arabic * Bulgarian * Chinese (simplified) * Chinese (traditional) text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:newwindow?rev=1202500160&do=diff How can I get the POPFile UI to open in a new browser window? If you want to the POPFile UI to open in a new window (or tab) of your browser (instead of overwriting your current window), you will have to adjust the settings of your browser or operating system. POPFile itself cannot do anything about the way the link to the UI is opened (at least not in a cross-platform, cross-browser way). text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:newwords?rev=1202500160&do=diff How does POPFile evaluate new words? POPFile assigns a probability to every word, for words that it has seen it naturally assigns the probability from the corpus. For unseen words it assigns the probability 1/(10 * size of that bucket's corpus)---i.e. a probability that indicates that the word is text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:nntpnonauthentication?rev=1202500160&do=diff How can I setup POPFile with NNTP server which does not need autentication? You can connect without authentication by changing your user id field (in your NNTP client) to “news.isp.com:” (copy your NNTP server name and add “:” after the name). You don't need to fill the password field but If your NNTP client needs some password, you can fill it with random charactor string. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:nodos?rev=1202500160&do=diff Can I make POPFile run in Windows without a DOS box on my taskbar? Yes, there is a Perl executable called Wperl just for this purpose. Create a batch file in notepad with the following contents and save it as STARTPF.BAT C:&#92; CD C:\POPFILE&#92; WPERL.EXE POPFILE.PL EXIT text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:nohistorydelete?rev=1202500160&do=diff POPFile's history keeps growing and messages are never purged. What's up? POPFile will check at regular intervals of one hour whether entries have to be purged from the history. If this doesn't happen with your installation, the most likely reason is that POPFile isn't running continously. If you run POPFile, get your email, disconnect, and then close POPFile immediately, your history will keep on growing. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:paulgraham?rev=1202500160&do=diff Was POPFile based on Paul Graham's research? No, it was inspired by another project called Ifile, that predates Graham's now famous paper "A Plan For Spam". It should be said however, that since the statistical approach to spam filtering became popular in the summer of 2002, a lot of ideas have been shared across projects. This even led to the creation of a text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:phrasesonly?rev=1202500160&do=diff Why does POPFile only classify individual words, not phrases? While it would seem that classifying on phrases like the CRM114 project does would be a good idea, it is simply too slow to do in practice for the theoretical increase in accuracy. The research in multi-word classifiers (not just POPFile's) has shown this tradeoff isn't worth it as the system storage, memory and speed requirements go up exponentially as the scalability lowers in proportion. Perhaps in the future this will be conside… text/html 2008-05-26T19:03:44+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:popfilelog?rev=1211828624&do=diff What is being Logged in POPFile*.log? When logging is enabled via the UI's configuration page, logging option, certain items will log to the resulting popfile*.log file; * Details of all POP3 sessions * Information and error messages from the various modules that comprise POPFile. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:popfileuses?rev=1202500160&do=diff What are some other uses for POPFile? As stated above, POPFile isn't limited to spam filtering. Many people are finding new uses for it. A Usenet user is experimenting with POPFile to find trolling messages in newsgroups for instance. A number of people have also created text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:preinstall?rev=1202500160&do=diff FAQ: Pre-Installation Questions * What are the system requirements for POPFile? * Which version of POPFile should I use? * I speak XXXXX language. Is there a translation for my language? Email Systems * I know POPFile works with POP3, but does it work with IMAP too? * Is POPFile compatible with Yahoo or MSN email? * Can I use POPFile with Yahoo or Hotmail webmail? * Is POPFile compatible with Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange? * Does POPFile work with virus scanne… text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:prescan?rev=1202500160&do=diff Can POPFile scan email before retrieving it? Many people would like POPFile to scan email before it comes down to their machine to get rid of spam before it is ever downloaded! This could be handy if you are on a slow connection...in a hotel perhaps. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:preventspam?rev=1202500160&do=diff What can I do to prevent being spammed? Filters are something of a reactionary approach to spam. There are actually many things you can do to prevent being spammed in the first place. While they probably won't rid you of spam completely, they can help. Here is a list: text/html 2013-11-05T13:58:06+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:pseudowords?rev=1383659886&do=diff What are the Pseudowords built into POPFile and how do they work? POPFile uses pseudowords to be able look at HTML display elements and various spammer tricks to handle them as a special case and help improve accuracy. Pseudowords are also used to keep track of what headers appear in a message and what words appear in some of the headers like: text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:reclassifymultiple?rev=1202500160&do=diff Can I reclassify multiple messages at once? Yes, however, you should not try to reclassify messages while your email client is actively getting email. Find the messages in the history that you wish to reclassify, use the drop down box and select the bucket you wish to reclassify to and hit the reclassify button. If you are reclassifying a large number of messages at once, it can take a moment to finish. In v0.20 and later, the delay is nominal. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:reclassifywhen?rev=1202500160&do=diff How do I know when I should reclassify a message? POPFile is most effective when it is trained against misclassified messages. Please refer to TOE in the Glossary of Terms. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:resendmessage?rev=1202500160&do=diff Can POPFile Resend a Message from History POPFile is proxy so cannot redeliver a message to your mail client. It is only able to modify messages by adding headers or tagging the subject as the messages are originally downloaded. There are two main reasons people ask for this feature: text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:resetstatistics?rev=1202500160&do=diff How do I reset the statistics and does this modify my corpus? Resetting the statistics is a good idea after you have trained POPFile enough that you feel it is doing a good job of classifying your email. Just click the “Reset Statistics” button on the Buckets page to do this. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:security?rev=1202500160&do=diff FAQ: POPFile Security * What security issues might there be when running POPFile? * What is being logged in POPFILE*.LOG? * Why is POPFile causing alarms in my antivirus program? * I forgot my password for POPFile Control Center. How can I reset it? * Can I use POPFile if I want to use SSL connections to my server? text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:securityissues?rev=1202500160&do=diff What security issues might there be when running POPFile? Home users are believed to be reasonably secure with the current design of POPFile, however there are a few situations that users should be aware of. Currently POPFile stores the last 2 days of message history in an unencrypted form. It is possible that someone could read the contents of a user's mail if they can gain access to the files that are contained within the POPFile directory. Home users have little to worry about this situat… text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:shutdown?rev=1202500160&do=diff How do I close down POPFile properly? The best way is to use one of the “Shutdown POPFile” links. One of them can be found in the POPFile Control Center, the other can be found in the start menu if you are using the windows version of POPFile. POPFile will also close down gracefully if you shutdown or reboot your computer. text/html 2008-02-09T19:04:36+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:skins?rev=1202583876&do=diff What are the skins for? There are a few different reasons for the skins. The first is obvious, they are fun. However, there are more serious reasons for skins. A few of the skins provide large text, for people who have a hard time reading smaller text. Some of the skins are designed so that POPFile will display as much information on one screen as possible. You may also find some of the skins are easier to read on a laptop or a CRT. They are there to do what you wish to do with them. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:spaauthcompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff Is POPFile compatible with Secure Password Authentication/AUTH? Yes, POPFile works with SPA/AUTH. Please read the manual for details. Here is a Howto for Eudora users. Do we handle this any better now? Looks like we do: Quick Start Guide: Using POPFile with Secure Password Authentication This page needs updating then. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:speeduptraining?rev=1202500160&do=diff Speed Up Training A lot of people ask how they can make POPFile learn quicker rather than just go through the normal training process. The recommended method for training POPFile is to reclassify messages that are missclassified as they arrive. You should not try to speed up learning by forwarding/resending old mail to yourself. POPFile learns a lot about email from its headers; when you forward existing messages it adds characteristics of your own mail which will confuse POPFile's training. text/html 2014-02-28T17:27:02+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:ssl?rev=1393608422&do=diff Can I use POPFile if I want to use SSL connections to my server? The good news is: Yes, you can use POPFile over SSL connections! POPFile 0.22.0 (or later) can make SSL connections to mail servers if some optional Perl and OpenSSL components are installed. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:sslcompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff Is POPFile capable of doing SSL email connections? Yes, 0.22.0 (or later) supports SSL connections between POPFile and the email server. See Can I use POPFile if I want to use SSL connections to my server? for details The following applies to earlier releases: Due to the nature of SSL it isn't possible to do this directly as POPFile can't see the encrypted data between your email client and server. At some point in the future it might be possible to do if someone were to implement an SSL pro… text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:startup?rev=1202500160&do=diff Starting and Stopping POPFile Automatically Windows The current Windows installer has a check box labelled Run POPFile automatically when Windows starts This check box is selected by default so the installer will create a suitable shortcut in your text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:statistics?rev=1202500160&do=diff What do the statistics mean? Classification Accuracy means what it sounds like; POPFile's successful classification accuracy rating. Emails Classified shows all of your buckets, how many messages have been classified to each one and the percentage of messages sent to each bucket. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:systemrequirements?rev=1202500160&do=diff What are the system requirements for POPFile? POPFile requires a computer that is capable of running Perl. Most popular platforms have a Perl available for it. As of version 0.20 POPFile requires Perl 5.8.0 or better for Windows users or 5.6.0 or better for all other platforms. On Windows, POPFile is available in a pre-configured version that includes its own version of Perl. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:trainingwhen?rev=1202500160&do=diff When will POPFile be trained? Training will only happen when you reclassify a message. In particular, POPFile will not learn anything when it classifies a message, it will not learn when a magnet is triggered, and it will not learn when you move a message in your mail client from one folder to another. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:using?rev=1202500160&do=diff FAQ: Using POPFile Reclassifying * When will POPFile be trained? * How long will it take until POPFile will reach a decent accuracy? * How do I know when I should reclassify a message? * Can I reclassify multiple messages at once? * What's the minimum and maximum number of buckets POPfile can support? History * What order are the messages sorted in? * Why is email being kept both in POPFile and in my email program? * Sometimes POPFile's UI "hangs". Is something wro… text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:virusscanfirewallscompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff Does POPFile work with virus scanners and firewalls? Yes it does. POPFile functions as a proxy, as many virus scanners do. It is possible to chain together both your virus scanner and POPFile so they may work together. In addition, firewall users must allow POPFile to act as a server for it function. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:whathappens?rev=1202500160&do=diff What does POPFile do to the email it receives? POPFile is a proxy that does two things. First, it listens to any commands issued to it by your email client and passes them along to your email server. When your email client asks it to retrieve a message, POPFile adds an text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:whatis?rev=1202500160&do=diff What is POPFile? POPFile classifies email into categories you define. It can sort into spam and not spam or into any number of categories you like (e.g. work, personal, important project, hobby, etc.). The classification is done using a naïve Bayes algorithm. In other words, POPFile uses statistics to track which words are likely to appear in which messages. This means that POPFile will adapt to the kind of mail you receive and needs to be trained. Out of the box, it doesn't know text/html 2012-08-28T13:21:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:whengood?rev=1346160080&do=diff How long will it take until POPFile will reach a decent accuracy? It all depends on the number of messages you get. Most people are reporting a very good accuracy ( > 97% ) after some 1000 messages. The global statistics (see link below), tell us that after 500 messages the average accuracy is at 98.29% and that over 92% of users are getting an accuracy over 95% at that point (as of 28 September 2009; check the link below for the latest data). text/html 2009-09-27T04:04:24+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:whichversion?rev=1254024264&do=diff Which version of POPFile should I use? There are three distributions of POPFile available, Crossplatform, Windows and Mac OS X. The programs are the same, however the Windows distribution includes a user friendly Windows installer application to help you get it running quickly and a system tray icon that lets you easily access the user interface. If you are a Windows user without an existing installation of Perl, you are encouraged to use this distribution as it comes pre-configured with P… text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:whitelists?rev=1202500160&do=diff Does POPFile support Whitelists? Can I import an address book into POPFile? The short answer is you can not import addressbooks into POPFile. The good news is that you probably do not need to use whitelists because using POPFile doesn't preclude you from using whitelists in your email client text/html 2013-10-10T15:02:14+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:whybetter?rev=1381417334&do=diff What separates this project from other Naïve Bayesian email classifiers? A few things actually... * First, POPFile is not tied to a certain brand or type of email client or server. * POPFile is written in Perl. As Perl is available for a wide array of platforms, POPFile is compatible with a very wide array of computers. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:whyperl?rev=1202500160&do=diff Why was POPFile written in Perl? Why not? Perl was the language of choice for the author. There are a number of reasons why this was a good choice. Perl is an interpreted language that has ports for almost every popular platform available today. This means that a user can run the same POPFile code without any changes or recompiles on any available Perl installation (unlike languages such as C). Perl also has very powerful text string functions built in, which makes it very well suited to e… text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:wordlistcount?rev=1202500160&do=diff Why doesn't my wordlist count increase as my statistics increase for each successful message classification? This seems to be a point that many people are confused by. If your email is being correctly classified with the corpus that you have set up currently, there is no reason to add more data to the corpus. POPFile only modifies the corpus when it misclassifies an email and it does so when you reclassify the message itself. The assumption is that the data in the corpus is all that is neede… text/html 2009-09-26T21:19:06+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:wordsalad?rev=1253999946&do=diff Why doesn't word salad work? Spammers have started using “ word salad” to get past spam filters. Spammers either randomly use a lot of unspammy dictionary words or they just load up the email with made up words. Sometimes it may also be as a news article or section of text from a book. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:xmlrpc?rev=1202500160&do=diff XML-RPC interface For some time had an experimental external interface to POPFile through XML-RPC. Beginning in PF v0.22 the XML-RPC component is no longer experimental. If XML-RPC is enabled, an external program written in many different programming languages can communicate with POPFile to use its services. text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:xpoplinkdisplay?rev=1202500160&do=diff How do I get Outlook to display the X-POPFile-Link header? Unfortunately, Outlook lacks the ability to display all the message headers in a direct fashion. The companion to POPFile, Outclass allows you to classify messages within Outlook itself. (Outclass does not support other clients currently.) text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:yahoohotmailwebmailcompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff Can I use POPFile with Yahoo or Hotmail webmail? While POPFile currently does not have built-in support for webmail email systems, it does work when used in conjunction with external programs like YahooPOPs, HotPOP3, Hotmail Popper or MrPostman (which has support for both Yahoo and Hotmail). text/html 2008-02-08T19:49:20+00:00 Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) http://www.getpopfile.com/docs/faq:yahoomsncompatible?rev=1202500160&do=diff Is POPFile compatible with Yahoo or MSN email? POPFile supports MSN authentication. See the manual section on Secure Password Authentication. If you have Yahoo POP3 access you should be able to set up your yahoo account like a usual POP3 account. If you are looking for information on Yahoo or Hotmail webmail then look at the answer to the