SpamPal - Transparent Proxy Feature

One of the most frequent complaints about SpamPal is the difficulty of the initial setup. The user has to go into their email program's configuration, and make changes to their username and servername settings... this causes lots of confusion, especially where anti-virus scanners are also being used.

Therefore, future versions of SpamPal will include a feature which I call the Transparent Proxy, which aims to remove the need to make changes to your email program's configuration. Since the transparent proxy is still only in beta-release, it isn't featured in the manual, so this page will aim to quickly explain how to use it.

WARNING

The transparent proxy is currently in beta-release. Beta-releases are not-quite-finished software released for testing purposes. By following the instructions on this page, you recognise and understand the inherent risks in using beta-releases of software.

How to use the transparent proxy (for new users)

This section will explain how a new user should install SpamPal to use the transparent proxy. Existing users wanting to experiment with the transparent proxy should scroll down to the next section.

1. Install SpamPal by double-clicking on the spampal.exe installation archive. Follow the on-screen instructions.

2. When SpamPal first starts, you should see a message about successful installation of a 'layered service provider' and be prompted to reboot your machine. I strongly suggest that you do so.

   

3. And that's it! When you fetch your mail the spam should now be tagged with **SPAM** in the subject and SpamPal's special X-SpamPal: header in the message headers; you will still have to create a filtering rule to move this spam into your spamtrap folder, as detailed in the manual. For users with IMAP4 mailboxes, this isn't necessary as the spam will be automatically moved to a spamtrap folder (but won't be tagged by default)

You must have admin rights to set up the transparent proxy! Although you don't need administration rights on your machine to actually use the SpamPal transparent proxy, the first time you run SpamPal (when it installs the 'layered service provider'), it must be done from an account with administration rights. If you do not have admin rights at this point, SpamPal will default to configuring itself for the old method of operation, where you have to change the username & servername settings in your email client.

Further information about the transparent proxy can be found further down this document.

How to use the transparent proxy (for existing users)

Existing users do not have to use the transparent proxy; you can install the new version of SpamPal and it should continue to use your existing settings. But if you want to play with the SpamPal transparent proxy, here's how to do it... You will need administration rights to install the transparent proxy. If you don't have access to the admin accounts on your machine, stop now!

1. The first step is to remove SpamPal from your configuration. Go into your email program and for each account, change the username & servername settings to what they were before you used SpamPal - ie if your settings were previously:

   Username:	jjf
   Mail server:	pop.twinlobber.org.uk

   And when you set up SpamPal, you changed them to:

   Username:	jjf@pop.twinlobber.org.uk
   Mail server:	localhost

   Then you should now change them back to:

   Username:	jjf
   Mail server:	pop.twinlobber.org.uk

   Do not forget that if you also set up the SpamPal SMTP proxy, in order to auto-whitelist the recipients of outgoing mail, you must also change the outgoing mailserver setting in your email program from 'localhost' to the name of the outgoing mailserver for your ISP.

2. Check that you can now fetch mail without the SpamPal tray icon animating, and without spam being tagged by SpamPal.

3. Make sure SpamPal isn't already running, and if it is exit it by right-clicking on the 'pink umbrella' icon and selecting 'Exit'. Now, install the new version of SpamPal by double-clicking on the spampal.exe installation archive.

4. SpamPal is now installed. Now, you must go into the Connections tab of the SpamPal options window; for each port you have configured, you'll need to change the 'proxy type' setting from "single servername" or "multiple servernames" to "transparent".

   

5. If the local port numbers you're using are not the standard ones (110 for POP3, 143 for IMAP4 and 25 for SMTP), you will also need to change the port numbers to be the standard ones. The exception is if your mail client is connecting to something on your local machine (ie the mailserver name is still 'localhost' even after you've removed the SpamPal settings from your email client), such as some types of virus-scanner or a program to access free mailboxes using POP3 (such as FreePOPs or YahooPops). In this case, you will need to set the local port number to be the port number you're connecting to.

   The 'local port number' setting in the SpamPal port properties dialog actually means something subtly different when you're using the transparent proxy. In previous versions of SpamPal, if you set the local port number to (say) 110 then SpamPal would listen on port 110 and accept connections on port 110. (This is why SpamPal had to use a different port number from your anti-virus tool.) When using the transparent proxy, if you set the local port number to (say) 110 then SpamPal will intercept connections made to other programs or machines using port 110.

   If you need SpamPal to intercept connections on more than one local port number (for example, if you collect some of your mail using FreePOPs on port 9990 but collect the rest from your ISP's POP3 server which uses port 110), don't forget that you can add more port settings by clicking 'Add port' from the 'Connections' screen. There's no reason you can't filter POP3 connections on two or three or more port numbers.

6. When you click OK, you should see the box below and be prompted to restart your machine; I strongly advise you do so, as some programs will become unstable if you do not.

   

   If your current account does not have administration rights on your machine, you may see an error instead of the above message. In this case, switch to your admin account and start SpamPal, and you should see the above message. If not, repeat the above step for changing the proxy type setting of SpamPal's ports for your admin account too, and then the above message should appear.

7. When you now try to fetch mail, the SpamPal tray icon should animate, and your spam should be tagged and filtered as before.

Using the transparent proxy

The transparent proxy comes with default lists of programs for which it should and should not filter mail. If it encounters a program not on this list, it prompts you as to whether it should filter for that process:

If you see this message for a well-known program that you think SpamPal should know about already, tell us about it and we'll add this process to the default list that comes with SpamPal. You can edit the lists of programs that SpamPal will and won't filter from the "Advanced->Programs" section of the SpamPal options window

You can fine-tune the operation of the SpamPal transparent proxy from the 'control' tab of the port properties dialog:

By default the transparent proxy ports are configured to only filter outgoing connections - ie connections made by something running on your machine. If you are running a mailserver on your machine, you may wish to activate the option to filter incoming connections to your server. You can also set the port to only filter connections to/from specific I.P. address, netblocks or mailservers.

Removing the transparent proxy

On the 'Advanced' screen of the options dialog is a button that will remove the SpamPal transparent proxy Layered Service Provider from the service providers database on your machine:

If you click this button, the Layered Service Provider will be removed and the SpamPal transparent proxy will no longer function. However, before doing so you should remove any transparent proxy ports from the 'Connections' screen (or at least change their proxy type to something other than 'transparent'), otherwise SpamPal will just reinstall the Layered Service Provider at the earliest opportunity.

The Layered Service Provider should be removed automatically when you uninstall SpamPal.

Problems

The transparent proxy is currently in beta-release. There probably will still be bugs left in it. There may also be incompatibilities with existing software. If you encounter problems using the SpamPal transparent proxy, or find other software became unstable once you installed the transparent proxy, it is much-appreciated if you could report the bugs so that we can investigate them. Thanks!

If you're not willing to report bugs you encounter, there isn't any point in you using a beta-release of any software.