BlackMamba v1.1
Semi-automatic Spam filter
License: GNU GPL
Author: Ashwin Jayaprakash (ashwinjay@rediffmail.com)
Website: http://www.JavaForU.com
Instructions
Configuration:
BlackMamba relies on 4 things to correctly classify your mails:
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An Address Book, which contains your friends' addresses,
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A Spammer list, which contains a list of Spammers,
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A list of words, when they appear in the Subject of the eMail can be called as Spam.
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And a Size Filter for your mails from friends and another one for the others.
All 4 of these can be configured separately.
BlackMamba's power lies in it's ability to support Regular Expressions for the Address Book,
Spammer List and Spam Subjects. The Regular Expressions allowed here are described in great
detail in the Java documentation. A Good tutorial can be found here.
This lets you configure the maximum mail size from a friend (in Address Book) beyond which, it
will be classified as Possible Spam. It also lets you specify the maximum mail size from a
stranger (not in Spammer list) beyond which, it will be classified as Spam.
This regular expression in the Spammer list, means all Senders with mail IDs from some domain,
for example, yehaw.com are to be considered as Spam. So if you keep getting spam from
abcd@yehaw.com and xyz@yehaw.com etc, they will go to the Spammer list.
Un-Installation:
Un-Installation is very simple. Close BlackMamba if it is running. Then delete the folder
where it is installed.
Tips, Tricks and Frequently asked questions:
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Q: Why do some of my friends' mails get classified as Possible Spam? A:
BlackMamba uses Regular Expressions to search the mail subjects for spam. There are
occassions when harmless mails which contain too many punctuations get mistakenly
classified as Possible Spam.
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Q: Most of the mails I get are Spam. Do I have to keep adding all of them to my
Spammer list? A: If you know for sure that the sender is a Spammer and you keep
getting mails from the same mail address, then you should. But most often the Spammers use
fake addresses which are different each time to avoid detection. In such cases it is best
just to ignore and delete them from BlackMamba.
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How to fight Spam, from BBC Click Online -
1 and
2.
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Q: I have a lot of addresses in my MS Outlook/Netscape Mail. How do I add all of
them to BlackMamba's Address Book. A: BlackMamba stores addresses, spammers list in
separate text files in the "resources" directory of the installation. You can export the
addresses (Addresses only, no Screen names, no Phone numbers etc) from your mail
client and copy and paste the addresses (one eMail address per line) at the end of
AdressesDB.txt file and save it. The same for SpammersDB.txt which contains
the Spammers' addresses. These changes will take effect the next time you start BlackMamba.
Be sure to keep a backup of the files before you modify them, so that you can revert back
to a safe, working list of addresses/spammers.