Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

[keith]

I have set up spam filtering in EPIM as instructed in the Help system. But despite many times marking messages as spam over a long period, the system doesn't seem to 'learn' that messages on that subject, or from that sender are spam. Resetting 'learning' didn't seem to help.

I came to EPIM after using 'The Bat' as an email client. This had a very successful, rapidly learning Bayesian system to weed out spam to the extent of 95+% accuracy within a month. Is the EPIM system supposed to be similar, because I haven't seen any sign of it diverting email to the spam folder at all.

[Rose Ford]

The spam system is pretty new, and I haven't heard/seen many people talking about it

Most everyone I know that uses EPIM like setting up their own spam rules and don't trust self learning systems.

[keith]

I agree: I have set up rules too, but do feel that the 'learning system' as advertised/described in the help system ought to function, tho' I haven't seen any clear sign yet that it is learning. The other virtue of the system used with the Bat! was that it gave statistics on how it was performing - so many emails detected as definite positives (= put to Spam folder), so many definite negatives, so many where system was undecided, and asked user for decision, then learned from this, and so on. So it can be done!

[admin]

keith, if you think you received email which should have been marked as spam but didn't, please forward me via PM the SPAM log file (can be found here Tools->Options->Synchronization, Browse...) and mention subject of the email message in question. Will check out how to adjust the filtering algorithm so that it worked better.

[CraigS26]

From the reverse angle - IF you mark a SPAM'd Email as "NOT SPAM"- should EPIM Adjust/Remember that Address as OK = Inbox, OR is a "IF This Address - Send to Inbox" RULE required?
Marked a friend's email in SPAM folder as "NOT SPAM" but it later was sent to the SPAM folder again.
Rarely occurs but may as well understand the intent.

[a8907433]

In the past I had this problem too- I marked an email as "not spam", and this did not work. But for the last few versions this problem was gone (or there was no necissity to use it?). For me the spam filter is just a convenient fast rule. One click- and the mail is spamed- this works very good for me. But I must admit, I get very rarly spam. Just the same 3 or 4 senders (Facebook & co.), once or twice a day. That´s all, so I can´t really judge the spam filter.

[admin]

EPIM will also adjust its anti-spam settings whenever you mark messages as not spam. Although it takes into account message headers and contents not just the sender's email address.

[norsea]

EPIM will also adjust its anti-spam settings whenever you mark messages as not spam. Although it takes into account message headers and contents not just the sender's email address.

In my experience this is not true.

The SPAM filtering in EPIM does place email into the SPAM folder on its own upon arrival.

Unfortunately, it also puts lots of email that is not SPAM in the folder as well. The most flagrant (meaning happens to every email) is email from Amazon.com. No matter how many times I have marked email as Not Spam, it continues to put it into the SPAM folder. And this is but one example.

I have not seen any "learning" associated with the Mark as Not Spam selection button in the SPAM folder.

Conversely, I have not see any learning from the Mark as Spam button in my Inbox either.

I have NOT encountered instances of email from addresses in by Contacts being treated as SPAM.

So, based on my experience, the "learning" is not working at all.

I had not had a need for turning on the SPAM capability of EPIM until this year due to an ISP I was using closing its data center which meant I had to find another hosting provider who, unfortunately, does not have as robust a SPAM filtering process as the previous service. The inability of EPIM to "learn" is most disappointing.

[CraigS26]

EPIM will also adjust its anti-spam settings whenever you mark messages as not spam. Although it takes into account message headers and contents not just the sender's email address.

In my experience this is not true.

The SPAM filtering in EPIM does place email into the SPAM folder on its own upon arrival.

Unfortunately, it also puts lots of email that is not SPAM in the folder as well. The most flagrant (meaning happens to every email) is email from Amazon.com. No matter how many times I have marked email as Not Spam, it continues to put it into the SPAM folder. And this is but one example.

I have not seen any "learning" associated with the Mark as Not Spam selection button in the SPAM folder.( Me either)

Conversely, I have not see any learning from the Mark as Spam button in my Inbox either.

I have NOT encountered instances of email from addresses in by Contacts being treated as SPAM. ( I Have One )

So, based on my experience, the "learning" is not working at all.

I had not had a need for turning on the SPAM capability of EPIM until this year due to an ISP I was using closing its data center which meant I had to find another hosting provider who, unfortunately, does not have as robust a SPAM filtering process as the previous service. The inability of EPIM to "learn" is most disappointing.

EDIT: 7/16 --- My Doctor's Office Emails have been Fine for forever BUT Today's went to SPAM. Same address Different Treatment for WHY?

An email -- from EPIM Admin -- advising of THIS Thread's New Post today Went To MY SPAM Folder.
"Not Spam" checks and a Rule to to put a - Current Contact Address - in INBOX instead of the usual 100% to SPAM is useless. Box chk'd to Not use Spam for Contacts.
Dual Login Security Number emails have gone to SPAM, and I often think they haven't been sent, so I repeat the exercise.
I understand email addresses with -- egh.ajfkpjh-fgh -- non-sensical characters going to Spam but I've seen addresses as normal as my Hotmail address ( and with known domains) be placed in SPAM.
SPAM is more trouble than help.
I can live with it but would love to DISABLE SPAM.

[MetalDrop]

Correct me if I'm wrong, because I probably am, but isn't EPIM spam control just the collection of rules at:

Top Menubar -> Tools -> Message Rules?

As far as I know there's not any real self learning / AI way to mark spam as spam and have the system artificially learn or do anything. Just a way to create fast macro style rules from a message via the right click menu or add rules directly yourself. Which would mean the user has to confirm each new rule set used by the spam filter. Even marking something not as spam I think just creates a higher priority matching rule for that Sender+Subject+MailAccount so it would only work properly if you never added a rule higher priority to that rule that would mark it as spam again. Which would be convoluted if used too much and you'd be better off adjusting your rules rather than relying on marking them not as spam.

So then if you are having issues all you need to do is go to the rules dialog and figure out what rule you added that's causing the issues.

If your rules get way out of wack from too many fast and dirty overrides then I think:
Top Menubar -> Options -> Mail -> Spam - > Reset training data

Despite it's odd name just Deletes all your message rules, since otherwise you can only delete one at a time in the rule management dialog.

[admin]

norsea, with all due respect we cannot rely purely on your experience when there’s facts stored in the log files. Please forward me via PM the spam log file and mention subjects of couple email messages that got wrongly detected as spam/not spam.

CraigS26, please check if EPIM’s spam filtering option is enabled for your hotmail.com account and that’s not the server’s filtering mechanisms (which seems to be so as there’s no “Mark as not Spam” button on the toolbar) you complain about.

MetalDrop, you’re wrong, there’s Bayesian algorithms used for learning from your actions (marking messages as spam and as not spam) and detecting probabilities that a certain email is spam.

[drrwilliams]

Good day, I have emailed EPIM about "spam" and not much came from it. I got a hold of Charter Spectrum and they claim they can do nothing about it. I do not use "spam" and have it turned off inside of EPIM. Ironically about 90% of the spam that I get are from contacts that exist in my contact section. The whole thing is strange. Every day I either delete or move emails from the spam folder to the In folder.

[admin]

There's an option that allows you to exempt messages from spam filtering if a sender is in the contacts. If that didn't work, we'd need to see the spam log file.
If the spam filtering option is disabled in EPIM but you still get messages in spam, that's the spam filtering mechanism of your email provider working.

[norsea]

norsea, with all due respect we cannot rely purely on your experience when there’s facts stored in the log files. Please forward me via PM the spam log file and mention subjects of couple email messages that got wrongly detected as spam/not spam.

CraigS26, please check if EPIM’s spam filtering option is enabled for your hotmail.com account and that’s not the server’s filtering mechanisms (which seems to be so as there’s no “Mark as not Spam” button on the toolbar) you complain about.

MetalDrop, you’re wrong, there’s Bayesian algorithms used for learning from your actions (marking messages as spam and as not spam) and detecting probabilities that a certain email is spam.

Not much "respect" from you at all when you chose to delete that post in which I provided complete details of how the SPAM filtering system is working on the four computers on which I have EPIM installed and went on to state that what you are offering as a SPAM filter is doing nothing to remove the number times a person has to deal with each SPAM email message they receive; and using the SPAM filter you offer increases the number of times each message must be dealt with by the user.

Don't get upset with me because I am able to point out that the way the system works is counter productive. Take a detailed look at what you are offering and the fact that I am not the only one who is posting to this thread saying exactly the same thing which is that the EPIM SPAM filter is not doing the job!

It makes no difference that you have worked hard on it and it has all kinds of logic in it when the end user is experiencing issues that do not coincide with the claims that you are making about functionality. It is not our fault!

And, deleting posts with factual information is really a p-poor way to treat your customers. I wonder how long this one will remain on the server...

Regards,

Jim

[admin]

Sorry, I'm not aware of the deleted post. If you tell me approximate date it was deleted, I could have a closer look at what happened to it. If you still experience issues mentioned in that post, let us know, will investigate.

Not upset at all, in fact we're very grateful to all the comments you and other users leave in the forum. Thanks to them we're able to see things that we'd never thought of otherwise and that need to either be added or adjusted or improved. As for this thread, you can have a look at my previous reply, more often than not, those are different issues users experience, the problems just fell into the same topic or category a thread is about.

All in all, please note we still haven't received a spam log from you that would support your experience. Waiting for it, thanks