Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

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norsea
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by norsea »

admin wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 7:56 pm 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 :)
I posted it about 10 minutes before I received an email with your message. Perhaps there is more going on here than either of us know. To be honest, I was kind of surprised not to see the post. It could well have been some sort of glitch (technical term) with the system. I reviewed it prior to posting but did not look after posting and logged out immediately thereafter.

My point in the post was the current SPAM system calls for handling SPAM messages too many times and that messages that had been previously marked as SPAM (meaning they were coming from the same source) were being put in the SPAM folder when received. This has happened to several emails from Amazon.com days after we had marked many previous messages as being not SPAM.

The point of all this being that we cannot tell the SPAM filter to delete SPAM because we have no faith in the systems ability to deal with messages appropriately, based on our experience.

As for the loi, what log are you speaking of. I am not aware of any logging going on on my machine other than the one I can send when something fails and I get a popup asking if I want to send it to support.

Regards,

Jim
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by keith »

admin wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 11:55 am 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.
How can we see that such an algorithm is working. I've been marking messages from the same sources as 'spam' for months, yet the new ones from the same sources re-appear daily. As I've said before, the email client 'The Bat!' had an excellent plugin system for handling spam using Bayesian logic. It not only allowed one to set the margins of probability that a message was spam, but also gave the user feedback on how many messages it had classified as spam or not spam, or possibly spam (with probablility), etc. That sort of functionality is IMO what we need.
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by admin »

norsea, you can check for log files here: Tools->Options->Synchronization, Browse... And name of the one we need should start with "SpamFilter".

keith, you see the function is working when EPIM classifies some messages as SPAM. If this doesn't work on your side, please forward me the "SpamFilter" log file, will check it out. You will also be able to see the SPAM stats in the log file, if you need that kind of info.
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by keith »

Like norsea, I'd not realised there was any logging visible to the user which is available. Thanks for the guidance in finding it!

I don't understand much of what it says, but am noting that the MAIL log has lines for 'Spam Score' and 'Action' taken for each email listed. However, I can't see any relationship between the Spam Score and any 'action' derived from this, as the action for the ones I've seen is always 'none'. Does a high Spam Score or a low Spam Score indicate probability that an email is spam? Scores I've seen in a brief look at the Mail Log range from near zero to 10, but always without action, despite emails with scores in this range being amongst those I've marked as Spam for months previously.

In the .PDF of part of that Mail Log, I've highlighted emails from several senders, which are included in those I consistently mark as Spam, but with no apparent effect.

I don't understand how to interpret the SpamFilter log either. Again, in the .PDF attached I've highlighted subjects for emails which I've consistently marked as spam, in case that helps.

Note: The senders of some spam emails don't act on unsubscribe requests. Hence, I do rely on a spam filter at the email client stage.

Please let me know whether I can help further.

Keith
Attachments
SpamFilter_2020_07_26_11_38_54_log.pdf
(46.25 KiB) Downloaded 104 times
EPIM_LOGS 2020_07_24_10_24_00-01.zip
(1.49 MiB) Downloaded 107 times
Mail_2020_07_25_09_30_01_log.pdf
(366.14 KiB) Downloaded 99 times
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by admin »

keith, thanks for the log files. Do only messages' headers get synced for the Inbox of you mail account?
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by keith »

Thanks. Ah!. Not quite sure how to answer that, to be honest. I've a nagging feeling there's a setting somewhere to control whether just headers, or headers plus messages are downloaded for an IMAP account, but I can't remember where. Can you remind me, or tell me how otherwise to check the answer to your question. Keith
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by admin »

That's the "Manage Folders" button on the toolbar. Although when a new message arrives it either takes up some time to load or is already loaded when you click on it and that is noticeable.
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by keith »

Doh! Of course! Thanks, Yes: can confirm all folders are set to 'Headers' for synch. Keith
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by admin »

That's the reason spam filtering is struggling to work correctly on your setup. Will improve this in the next release. Thanks!
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by keith »

admin wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:17 pm That's the reason spam filtering is struggling to work correctly on your setup. Will improve this in the next release. Thanks!
Way hay! Just installed v9.3, and 15 of today's emails from the usual spam suspects instantly disappeared from inbox to spam folder! Looks as if EPIM has even picked up on my markings as spam from the past! This change not even listed in the version change list! Too modest :-))
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by admin »

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure why but the change was considered as a bit specific one and therefore found its way into the "other improvements" section. Nevertheless, glad it seemingly started to work in your case :)
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by norsea »

Well, I have given it some time to work on 9.3 and I find it is worse than the previous version.

First, after the upgrade to 9.3 everything that was working and going to SPAM as marked, is now coming into the inbox.

And, the vast majority of this stuff that I have been making as Not Spam since 9.4 was released, continues to come into my SPAM box.

Wondering if this applies to the above conversation?

Regards,

Jim
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by keith »

I'm using v9.3. Spam filtering is now working fine, with all folders set to "Synchronisation Type" = Headers.

If anything, more mail is going into Spam folder than is necessary, so I'd like to be able to tweak the criterion for 'put into Spam Folder' to be a little less severe. How does one do this?

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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by norsea »

Here are some log files.

I can find nothing about Headers and/or syncing anything in EPIM.

I download everything as I am a POP3 kind of guy.

Nothing is changing for me...

Regards,

Jim
Attachments
SpamFilter_2020_09_30_07_36_56.log
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SpamFilter_2020_09_29_03_17_09.zip
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SpamFilter_2020_09_28_07_21_05.zip
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Re: Does the EPIM spam filtering system actually work?

Post by admin »

Keith, there's no way to do that currently, although will place this as a suggestion into the to do list.

Jim, please mention subjects of email messages that went into spam wrongly or vice versa didn't go into spam when they needed to.
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