No Spam Today! for Workstations Support

Welcome to the No Spam Today! for Workstations Support. Here you will find the No Spam Today! FAQ lists, and links to some "How To..." guides.

Forum

The No Spam Today! support forum allows users to share tips and tricks on the topics of installation and custom rule design, and general discussion on the use of SpamAssassin™ on Windows™ platforms.

Other Resources

If you want to learn more about SpamAssassin's configuration options, see the SpamAssassin documentation files in the "sa\doc" subdirectory of your installation directory, or visit http://spamassassin.apache.org. Check out SpamAssassin's mailing lists, the archives are available here. There is also a powerful archive search engine available.

There are many SpamAssassin custom rulesets to be found in the SpamAssassin Wiki. For tips on custom rule writing, check out the SA Rules Emporium or look here.

No Spam Today! for Workstations FAQs

• Basics
• What is Spam Assassin™?
• Why do I seem to get email addressed to other people?
• Trial Version, Registration Keys and Installation
• Where can I download the free Trial Version?
• When installing, I see the following error message: "bayes: bayes db version 2 is not able to be used, aborting! (...)
• What are the limitations of the Trial Version?
• Where can I enter the registration key?
• What can I do when I lose my registration key?
• What Version of No Spam Today! am I using?
• How do I know there is an important update?
• There is a newer version of No Spam Today! available. How do I update my installation?
• Upon start No Spam Today! brings up the following message: "Your system clock appears to have been changed...
• No Spam Today! for Workstations Configuration
• Where can I access No Spam Today!'s statistics and configuration windows?
• I installed No Spam Today!, but I still receive spam mails. What am I doing wrong?
• Since using NoSpamToday! I am getting lots of duplicated email messages. What's wrong?
• I am using [...] as mail client. Is this mail client supported?
• I am testing No Spam Today! with the [...] mail client and have [...] antivirus software installed. This software is already using port 110. What can I do?
• I am using some version of an MS Outlook™ mail client. How can I set up a filtering rule to remove spam messages?
• The log file is cycled once it reaches a size of about 10MB. How can I increase the maximum log file size?
• Troubleshooting
• Everything used to work fine, now all of a sudden, MS Outlook is unable to retrieve mail.
• SpamAssassin Configuration
• Is it possible to have No Spam Today! add the spam indication via an X header rather than changing the subject line?
• Some obvious spam messages aren't tagged as SPAM. What can I do?
• How do I use SpamAssassin's automatic Bayesian Learning in No Spam Today! ?
• How can I make SpamAssassin learn false positives and false negatives?
• I use Microsoft [...] as mail client/mail server. How do I convert mail folders for use with sa-learn?
• I just installed No Spam Today!, and only 77% of the spam messages I get are tagged as SPAM. What's wrong?
• I enabled RBL checking, but it does not work. What did I do wrong?
• Can I change SpamAssassin command line options?
• Help! My new rule/configuration change does not work! How can I validate my changes?

No Spam Today! for Workstations Howtos

• How To Avoid Spam
• How To Train the Bayes Database

Basics

What is Spam Assassin™?
Award-winning SpamAssassin™ (http://spamassassin.apache.org) is considered the industry's leading spam filter, always finishing as one of the top contenders, or even best, in all spam filter tests. No Spam Today! always includes the latest stable version of SpamAssassin™. Future updates of SpamAssassin™ will be merged into the distribution, once they are proven and stable.

Note: We do not sell SpamAssassin™, it's Open Source and it's free!
SpamAssassin is a trademark of Deersoft, Inc.
The SpamAssassin open source project resides at http://spamassassin.apache.org.

Why do I seem to get email addressed to other people?
This can happen for two reasons:

• You received a "blind carbon copy": the sender listed your address in the BCC address field.
• The mail transfer protocol uses RCPT TO and MAIL FROM commands when transmitting a mail. The addresses used there need not have anything to do with the To and CC header fields in the message itself. But these header fields are displayed by your mail client. So it can appear the mail was not addressed to you at all.

Trial Version, Registration Keys and Installation

Where can I download the free Trial Version?
Please go to http://www.no-spam-today.com/download/workstation. and download the setup program. If you are behind a firewall blocking the download of executable files, choose to download the .zip archive, and use any archive software to unpack the setup program. Start the setup program with a double click.

When installing, I see the following error message: "bayes: bayes db version 2 is not able to be used, aborting! (...)"
This message is misleading, the database update still proceeds as expected. The SpamAssassin Wiki says: "There is nothing to fear, it is just a warning."

What are the limitations of the Trial Version?
The Trial Version of No Spam Today! is fully functional for 30 days after installation. When you purchase the full version this limitation is removed.

Where can I enter the registration key?
To enter the registration key, bring up No Spam Today!'s configuration wizard (if you don't know how to do this, see below). You can enter your name and key on the second page. After pressing "Register", the displayed version number should change from "Trial" to "Registered", if the registration was successful.

What can I do when I lose my registration key?
Please go here and request the key. It will then be sent to your email address again.

What Version of No Spam Today! for Workstations am I using?
There are three ways to find out the version of No Spam Today! for Workstations:

• check the log file noSPAMtoday.log in the installation directory, No Spam Today! logs its version when starting or when shutting down.
• find the version number on the license & registration page in the configuration wizard
• find a No Spam Today! executable file, right-click, select "Properties", and go to the "Version" tab.

How do I know there is an important update?
You are notified about important updates automatically.

There is a newer version of No Spam Today! available. How do I update my installation?
Download the latest version and install it on top of your current installation. Installation will replace all the files of the SpamAssassin distribution, but the configuration files local.cf and noSPAMtoday.cf are preserved.

Upon start No Spam Today! brings up the following message: "Your system clock appears to have been changed..."
This is caused by the software protection mechanisms of No Spam Today! Please contact , to get a so called "clock fix key".

No Spam Today! for Workstations Configuration

Where can I access No Spam Today!'s statistics and configuration windows?
Find the No Spam Today! icon in the system tray (in the lower right corner of your desktop, near the clock). Bring up the popup menu by clicking the right mouse button while over the icon, and choose the item you want.
Note for Windows XP (tm) users: Windows XP in its default configuration may hide this icon. To make it reappear, press the small arrow near the clock.

I installed No Spam Today!, but I still receive spam mails. What am I doing wrong?
No Spam Today! only tags spam mails, and does not delete them. To get rid of spam mails, you have to set up a filtering rule in your mail client to remove all mails tagged "SPAM" from your incoming folder.

Since using NoSpamToday! I am getting lots of duplicated email messages. What's wrong?
If you enabled "Leave Messages On Server" (or something similar), some mail clients retrieve all your mail again whenever you change some detail of your mail account settings (such as enabling/disabling NoSpamToday!).

I am using [...] as mail client. Is this mail client supported?
For No Spam Today! to work, the POP3 settings of your mail accounts have to be changed, so that mail is fetched via No Spam Today! instead of from your ISP's POP3 server directly. With some mail clients you will have to do the changes manually. Other than that No Spam Today! will work with every mail client.

I am testing No Spam Today! with the [...] mail client and have [...] antivirus software installed. This software is already using port 110. What can I do?
Set the POP3 port your mail client uses to 111, and set the POP3 port number of No Spam Today! to 111, too (the setting can be found on the last page of the configuration wizard). This way you will get a checking pipeline like this:

mail client  - (port 111) - No Spam Today! - (port 110) - antivirus - (port 110) - ISP POP3 server

If you want to uninstall No Spam Today! later, remember that No Spam Today!'s uninstall program will not reset the POP3 port of your mail client back to 110, you have to do this by hand.

I am using some version of an MS Outlook™ mail client. How can I set up a filtering rule to remove spam messages?
Find a menu item like "Tools/Message Rules/E-Mail" (the location depends on the version of Outlook you are using). In this dialog you can set up a rule that moves all mails with a certain text in the subject, e.g. "* Rated SPAM by No Spam Today! *", to some other folder.

The log file is cycled once it reaches a size of about 10MB. How can I increase the maximum log file size?
To increase the size for example to 10.000.000 byte, add this line to the noSPAMtoday.cf file in your installation directory, using a text editor: MaxLogFileSize=10000000

Troubleshooting

Everything used to work fine, now all of a sudden, MS Outlook is unable to retrieve mail.
SpamAssassin automatically expires old tokens in its Bayes database, to keep it from growing larger than a certain size. Depending on the number of mails learned, it can take weeks or months until this limit is reached the first time.
Database expiry can take several minutes to execute, especially the first time. Outlook has a timeout of 60s for POP3 transfers, so you usually get an error message from Outlook after about 60s, and expiry is aborted (some versions of Outlook ask you if the transfer should be aborted, in this case, answer 'No'). If database expiry does not finish, SpamAssassin will try again to expire the database the next time you retrieve mail, and the cycle repeats.
To break this cycle, go to the "Maintenance" tab of NoSpamToday!'s status window, and run expiry manually by pressing the "Expire Now" button. This runs a script named expire.bat, located in your installation directory. It is a good idea to run expire.bat regularly using the Windows XP task scheduler or similar.

SpamAssassin Configuration

Is it possible to have No Spam Today! add the spam indication via an X header rather than changing the subject line?
By default the mail headers already contain "X-Spam-Status" and "X-Spam-Level" headers you can use as spam indicators. If you want to disable subject rewriting, just clear the "subject tag" edit field in the No Spam Today! admin wizard. This will disable the appropriate "rewrite_header" configuration option of SpamAssassin.

Some obvious spam messages aren't tagged as SPAM. What can I do?
SpamAssassin is not human, spam which is obvious to you may not be obvious to SpamAssassin. You have several possible options:

• There are dozens of custom rulesets available to augment the distribution SpamAssassin rulesets. The best place to find them is the SpamAssassin Wiki. To use a ruleset, download it and copy the .cf file to the sa\ruleset subdirectory of your No Spam Today! installation. Watch out for updates of these rulesets, and install them regularly.
  Note that using additional rulesets may slow down mail checking, each additional ruleset increases memory and CPU usage of SpamAssassin.
• Add your own rules that increase the spam score if a message satisfies certain conditions. This is not easy to do, read here and here to learn how this is done. Custom rules should be added to the local.cf file in the sa\ruleset subdirectory of your No Spam Today! installation.
• There is an increasing amount of spam optimized to get low SpamAssassin scores. If this is the case, typical spam words are deliberately mis-spelled: ssuper ssales, v.i.a.g.r.a and the like. It can help to train the Bayesian filter of SpamAssassin to capture these mails. However, there is a minimum number of messages that has to be learned before the results of the Bayes tests are used by SpamAssassin. Find out more here.
• Virus mails typically come in waves. You may just sit it out, until a wave subsides.

How do I use SpamAssassin's automatic Bayesian Learning in No Spam Today! ?
If you use the default SpamAssassin configuration provided, Bayesian Learning will be enabled. The Bayesian database is then built incrementally by learning from incoming mails which hit the spam or nonspam thresholds. For details and further information see the SpamAssassin documentation, and the sa-learn documentation. If you are using Microsoft™ products, read the "How to..." guides supplied here and here.

How can I make SpamAssassin learn false positives and false negatives?
Collect false positives and negatives in separate mail folders. Enable the bayes database (set "use_bayes" to "1"). Use the sa-learn program in the sa subdirectory of your installation to feed the mails into SpamAssassin's database. For details and further information see the SpamAssassin documentation, and the sa-learn documentation. If you are using Microsoft™ products, read the "How to..." guides supplied here and here.

I use Microsoft [...] as mail client/mail server. How do I convert mail folders for use with sa-learn?
Microsoft mail software uses proprietary formats for its mail databases. Read the "How to..." guides supplied here and here to learn what you can do.

I just installed No Spam Today!, and only 77% of the spam messages I get are tagged as SPAM. What's wrong?
The Bayes tests do not work immediately. At least a minimum number of 200 messages has to be learned before the results of the Bayes tests are used by SpamAssassin. If you do not use sa-learn to explicitly add more spam mails to your Bayesian database, this database may grow only slowly.

I enabled RBL checking, but it does not work. What did I do wrong?
Make sure the DNS server setting is correct. To check if your DNS server works, test if a DNS lookup is successful. Typing something like this in a command line window should return our web server's IP address:

    nslookup www.no-spam-today.com <your DNS server>

Can I change SpamAssassin command line options?
You can change the default command line used to start SpamAssassin by adding a CommandLine setting to the SpamAssassinConfig section of your noSPAMtoday.cf file in your installation directory. The default setting is as follows:

    CommandLine=sa\spamassassin.exe -x --siteconfigpath="sa/ruleset" -e 255

Help! My new rule/configuration change does not work! How can I validate my changes?
Open a command line window, change to the NST installation directory and test all your .cf files with SpamAssassin's lint option:

   sa\spamassassin.exe -x --siteconfigpath="sa/ruleset" --lint

If you want to check whether SpamAssassin is using a certain configuration file, just put in a syntax error in this file (e.g. write a line with the word "foo" in it). If the file is used by SpamAssassin, an error should be reported.