[SpamCop-List] Plugging my free filtering program

[Peter Pearson]

spamcopfilter.py is a Python-language program that I wrote
to help manage my Spamcop mail account. It uses the IMAP
remote-mail-management protocol to ask Spamcop for the
headers of all the messages in my Held Mail folder, and then
instructs Spamcop to move the spammy-looking ones into a
"Spam for sure" folder.  I have improved it to the point where
it is a significant advance over the filtering capabilities
built into a Spamcop mail account. I run it just before
viewing my Held Mail folder, and it reduces the number of
messages by about 80%, which greatly reduces the risk that
I'll overlook the occasional (extremely rare) non-spam
message that lands in Held Mail.

You can get spamcopfilter.py (for free, of course) from

http://webpages.charter.net/curryfans/peter/downloads.html

Good features:

 - The code is written to be easily understood, and Python
   is a very readable language.

 - You can customize it for your needs with just a
   text editor. (But you need a Python interpreter to run
   it. Available free, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, at python.org.)

 - Basic customization amounts to editing these lines:
   my_name = "xxxxxxx at spamcop.net"    # Put your Spamcop address here.
   my_password = "???????"            # Put your password here.
   purgatory_name = "INBOX.Held Mail" # We look at messages from here,
   hell_name = "INBOX.Spam for sure"  # and move spam to here.
   logfile = open( "/home/peter/spamlog.txt", "a" )

The Unix-style string-matching language lets you react to . . .

 - patterns specifically at the beginning of the
   subject line: "Cheapest ...", "Impress your ...".

 - any digit between letters: catch V1AGRA and C1AL1S
   with a single rule. ( . . . but also P2P and B2B, if
   you deal with those . . . )

 - stuttered letters: catch viagra, viiagra, viaagra,
   and viagggra with a single rule.

 - non-adjacent keywords: catch "hidden xxx camera" for
   any xxx, or none.

 - patterns appearing as distinct words: catch "sex",
   but not "essex" or "sexagesimal".

I hope someone will find this useful.

Peter

-- 
Remove the two x's to get a good email address.