[lug] IMAP spam filtering

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Tuesday 12 August 2003 07:26 pm, Peter Hutnick wrote:
> Michael D. Hirsch said:
> > Does anyone have a recommendation for an IMAP spam filter?
>
> [snip]
>
> > This seems like it should already exist.  Any recommendation?
>
> I don't think there is really any such thing as an IMAP mail filter.  It
> either has to happen at transfer (SMTP), delivery (usually procmail), or
> in the user agent (KMail).

Actually, I found imapassassin on freshmeat that looks like it will do the 
job.  It is a small perl script that uses the spamassassin and impaclient 
perl libraries to do what I want.  I haven't used it yet, so I can't 
confirm that it works.

> Even if there is I don't think you'd want it, since IMAP doesn't do
> anything but listen on a port when you aren't connected.  You'd end up
> doing work in an interactive process that could have been done in the
> background.

Huh?  I'm asking for a daemon to query the server and filter my mail.  Why 
will it be an interactive process?

> Furthermore, IMAP and POP are not mutually exclusive (though the common
> practice of POP clients to delete seen mail from the server certainly
> interferes with optimal use of IMAP).

True.  But I don't think POP it turned on on my server.  Also, I'm not sure 
how possible it is to use the POP to move a message from one folder to 
another on the server.  I know you can do it with IMAP, and I don't think 
you can do it with POP.  

> Ideally you want to refuse as much SPAM as possible at the transfer
> phase then have the delivery agent junk the rest.

Sure. I _want_ to do that, but unfortunately I don't control the mail 
server but I do control my workstation.  Since I can't get spam filtering 
earlier than my workstation I'll do it there.

> I'm sure this is all somewhat academic, but I hope it is also clarifies
> things for you a bit.

As a former academic, I don't mind "somewhat academic" at all :-).  Thanks.   

Michael