Re: spam filtering using IMAP ?

[Mats Lidell <matsl@contactor.se>]

>>>>> Ted wrote:

Ted> How do you know if an article is spam or ham?  The user has to
Ted> determine that, right?  Or are you talking about automated server-side
Ted> classification?  I'm a little confused, maybe it would help if you did
Ted> a scenario of what happens to a message on the mail server and on the
Ted> client machine - what programs get invoked, what the user has to do...

Ok. I'll describe the setup.

On the server the messages are classified on arrival. This is done by
using procmail and some spam filtering software. I currently use my
own bayesian filter program but it could as well be bogofilter, ifile
or what ever. (In fact I plan to change to bogofilter soon.)

This gets spam to be filed to the spam folder. Ham is filed to other
folders based on standard procmail rules.

So when the user starts his MUA he will see a bunch of imap folders.

Now some articles might need to be reclassified because they went into
the wrong folders. This is the users responsibility but it should be
an easy and fast procedure. spam.el seems to be a good candidate for
this when using gnus.

Now since the spam filtering is done on the server the articles must
be reclassified on the server. So it is a matter of both finding a
good scheme for the server side reclassification and if spam.el can
support that.

Ted> I'm not sure how doing this on the server makes a big difference.

By doing this on the server makes all my MUAs see the same thing. Both
normal procmail filing into folders and spam handling is done on the
server. This makes it behave the same way for different MUAs and also
from different locations.

Ted> spam.el supports all that on the client side, and the only
Ted> penalty you pay is retrieving the article body.  Maybe you want
Ted> to have a single place to store message statistics?

Yes. Since the mails are classified and filed to folders on the server
the database needs to be updated on the server. (So the problem I want
to solve is how to feed back the reclassifications to the server.)

As you might read between the lines I would like to come up with a
scheme that also works for other MUAs than gnus. My personally
interest is then how to support that scheme in gnus.

Ted> There's the spam-process-destination and ham-process-destination
Ted> group parameters, which let you move spam or ham articles at
Ted> summary exit.  You can set them for a group, a topic, or a regex
Ted> matching the group name.

Aha. Sorry. I have missed those.

Ted> Is that helpful?  Or do you have something else in mind?

They sound good. I'll have a deeper look at it.

Ted> You should probably look at the CVS Gnus manual if you haven't
Ted> already.  It explains all the spam.el behavior and parameters.

RTFM. I know. ;-)

Yours
-- 
%% Mats