[Spambayes] Installation of anti spam software

[Skip Montanaro]

    Janet> Can you help me step by step to get your antispam software (I am
    Janet> not that good at software, but if I have enough instruction that
    Janet> takes me step-by-step, I do ok).

Sure.  I'm not a Windows person, but I'll try to get you pointed in the
right direction.  There are others on the list who should be able to help
with the fine points.

What do you use to read email at home (looks like Outlook Express)?
Assuming you use OE for reading mail and POP3 to fetch your mail from
erols.com, you'll need to install the Spambayes source package and run
pop3proxy.  Basically,

    * Grab the Windows installer for Python 2.2.3 from here:

        http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.2.3/Python-2.2.3.exe

      Run it to install Python.  It should install by default in
      c:\Python23. 

    * Grab the spambayes-1.0a4.zip file from here:

        https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=61702

      Unzip it.

    * Open up a command shell and execute

        c:\python23\python.exe pop3proxy.py -b

Once pop3proxy is running, you can configure it via the web interface (it
should open a browser window pointed at http://localhost:8880/
automatically).  You tell it where your remote POP3 server is (something
like mail.erols.com at port 110 I suspect, but check your OE config to be
sure).  You then need to configure Outlook Express to contact the pop3proxy
running on your machine (localhost, port 110 by default I think) to fetch
your mail instead of your current erols setup.

I don't think pop3proxy can currently be set up to run as a Windows Service
(started in the background automatically when your computer boots), so
you'll have to start it up when you want to read mail.  If you leave your
computer on there's no harm in just letting pop3proxy run.  It will only
contact your remote mail server when OE asks it for new messages.

Skip