Previous Next Up Table of Contents SpamSieve 2.9.25 Manual Technical Support
- 2.9.25—September 19, 2016
- Works with Apple Mail under macOS 10.12. It’s easiest if you
update to SpamSieve 2.9.25 before updating to 10.12. In any
case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Apple Mail
- Improved the positioning of the SpamSieve items in Apple Mail’s
Message menu.
- If SpamSieve’s plug-in is incompatible with the current version
of Apple Mail, the error message now includes a button to join
the SpamSieve public beta.
- The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox
script now has an option to mark good messages as read.
- The Apple Mail - Move if Spam,
Apple Mail - SaneBox, and
Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox
scripts now have an option to not change the junk status in Apple Mail,
as that can be very slow with some mail servers.
- Removed a workaround that sometimes prevented messages trained in
Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.10 from updating the junk status in Mail.
- SpamSieve is more careful about only modifying its launch agent file
when it’s actually changed, so as not to arouse the suspicions of
anti-virus software.
- Improved the reporting of Apple Mail training errors.
- Improved the error reporting when Apple Mail is having trouble
launching SpamSieve.
- Improved the error message if SpamSieve finds that its launch agent
has been unexpectedly deleted.
- Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in could report an error about
not being able to create a file.
- Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in was missing its Spanish
localization.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could get stuck in an auto-launch,
auto-quit cycle when logging into a slower Mac.
- Fixed a bug where Apple Mail could hang when processing incoming
messages if SpamSieve was showing a modal window, such as the
trial expiration alert.
- Microsoft Outlook
- Improved the following section of the manual:
- Renamed “Mac OS X” to “macOS” throughout the app and documentation.
- Made various code modernizations.
- Updated to Xcode 8.
- The distribution disk image is now signed.
- Updated the Spanish localization.
- Infinisys
customers can now participate in SpamSieve public betas.
- If you try to activate SpamSieve when its Dock icon is hidden, it now
reports how you can show the Dock icon.
- Worked around a Postbox issue that could make SpamSieve not realize
that it had seen certain messages before.
- If logging a mail client error to Console fails, SpamSieve will now
try to report the error via an alert window so it’s not lost.
- Improved the handling and reporting of file handle errors.
- Improved SpamSieve’s reporting of permissions errors when reading
files.
- Improved the error reporting and debug logging.
- Fixed a bug identifying the current mail client.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an autorelease pool error when reporting
a crash.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would log errors to Console at launch on
Mac OS X 10.6.
- 2.9.24—March 1, 2016
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.4. It’s easiest if you
update to SpamSieve 2.9.24 before updating to 10.11.4. In any
case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Made some optimizations so that SpamSieve launches faster and sorting
and deleting in the Blocklist, Whitelist, and Corpus
windows is faster.
- The Train as Good command in Apple Mail is better at finding
which inbox to move the message back to.
- The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app
file is now codesigned for Gatekeeper, so it will work without your
having to change System Preferences to allow applications downloaded
from Anywhere.
- The Apple Mail - Move If Spam
script can now color or flag messages based on how spammy they are.
- Improved the following sections of the manual:
- SpamSieve now uses a different and more reliable strategy to prevent
the OS from keeping it stuck in a partially launched state.
- Added an experimental option for Apple Mail to use black text for
messages marked as junk but not processed by SpamSieve, overriding
the low-contrast color that Mail added in Mac OS X 10.11. For
SpamSieve’s black text, click here;
for the default brown text click here.
- The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command now removes the Launch
SpamSieve.scpt file.
- When running as background applications, the Apple Mail - Remote
Training,
Apple Mail - SaneBox,
and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox
scripts no longer launch Mail if it is not already running.
- Improved the error handling in the Apple Mail - Discard Spam
script so that it can now delete most of the messages even if a few
result in errors.
- Reduced SpamSieve’s memory use when type-selecting in the Corpus,
Blocklist, and Whitelist windows.
- SpamSieve is better able to function when the system is unable to
tell it where the user’s home folder is.
- Improved the error reporting for the Software Update… command.
- Modernized the Software Update code that checks whether your OS
version is new enough to run the new version of SpamSieve.
- The SpamSieveHelper application will now quit in the rare event that
another copy is already running.
- Made some changes to try to work around a rare bug where SpamSieve’s
Apple Mail plug-in didn’t load until after the first few messages had
been downloaded from the server, leading to them being filtered
directly to the Spam mailbox rather than through SpamSieve.
- Worked around an issue where an internal path conversion error from
NSFileManager could cause SpamSieve to interrupt spam filtering
with an error dialog. Now SpamSieve will simply log an “Error looking
up image for address” message to the Console and continue filtering.
- Made various code modernizations.
- Made various changes to the build system.
- 2.9.23—December 8, 2015
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.2. It’s easiest
if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.23 before updating to
10.11.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in
Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple
Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the
SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to
the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
- Made a variety of changes to work around a bug in Mac OS X 10.11 in
which (in rares cases) the system would start to launch SpamSieve but
not load any of its code, leaving it stuck in a partially launched
state. This would particularly happen if Mail itself was
auto-launched by the system after your Mac booted. This could lead to
Apple Mail hanging (while waiting for SpamSieve), spam messages left
in the inbox (because the Mail plug-in was forced to assume they were
good), and high Mail memory use. SpamSieve’s launch agent now tries
to detect this situation and quit the stuck SpamSieve process,
allowing it to relaunch normally. If this is unsuccessful, the Mail
plug-in will report an error explaining what is going on and how you
can manually fix it.
- The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox
script can now move the spams to per-account spam mailboxes, has
better error reporting, and has an option to enable debug logging.
- The Apple Mail - SaneBox
script now has an option to enable debug logging.
- Made some improvements to the statistics database to be more
resilient to errors and also report them better.
- SpamSieve is better at handling errors if it gets disconnected
from Apple Mail in the middle of processing a message.
- SpamSieve will no longer try to use Apple Mail’s background
activity count scripting property on Mac OS X 10.11 because
it’s known to be broken. This will reduce unnecessary error
logging to Console.
- SpamSieve no longer creates an App Store Receipts folder,
since it would always be empty.
- Updated code for Xcode 7.1.
- Fixed the size of the distribution disk image window.
- Worked around a Finder bug that could cause the disk image’s icons to
be misaligned if the AppleShowAllFiles option was enabled.
- 2.9.22—October 21, 2015
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.1. It’s easiest if you
update to SpamSieve 2.9.22 before updating to 10.11.1. In any
case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- If SpamSieve detects that training a message didn’t work because of
an AppleScript bug in Mac OS X 10.11, it will now direct you to the
new Duplicate Apple Mail Accounts section of the manual for a
workaround.
- When filtering incoming messages, Apple Mail will now wait longer for
SpamSieve to launch in case the system delayed respawning the launch
agent. Thus, spam messages are more likely to be filtered rather than
left in the inbox.
- If the launch agent is set to be continuously running, it no longer
quits itself when Mail quits or SpamSieve quits/crashes. This should
help ensure that Mail is able to relaunch SpamSieve right away,
without Mac OS X 10.11 throttling the launch agent.
- The Apple Mail - Discard Spam
script now has an option to set the retry delay to work around a
problem with spam messages being left in the trash if Mail failed to
delete them.
- Improved the following sections of the manual:
- 2.9.21—September 28, 2015
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. It’s easiest
if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.21 before updating to El Capitan.
In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Microsoft Outlook 2016 removes the Run AppleScript rule
action feature. This makes it impossible to create a rule that
automatically processes incoming messages with SpamSieve. We
recommend using the “send-a-smile” button in Outlook’s main
window (below the search field) to send Microsoft feedback,
asking them to prioritize this feature. Please
see this forum post
for more information and workarounds for using SpamSieve with Outlook 2016.
- Added the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes
script as a workaround for automatically filtering messages with
Outlook 2016.
- Added support for App Transport Security on Mac OS X 10.11.
- Modernized code for the Xcode 7 compiler and the Mac OS X 10.11
SDK.
- The About, Software Update, and help windows now use the San
Francisco font on Mac OS X 10.11.
- Added the following sections to the manual:
- Improved the following sections of the manual:
- When SpamSieve encounters a permissions error, it now reports on any
applicable ACLs (Access Control Lists).
- Improved the error message when your version of SpamSieve is too old
for the current version of Mac OS X.
- Added “(?)” to error text to help people know what “Help
button” refers to.
- If a PDF file attached to an e-mail triggers an OS bug that leads to
an infinite loop, SpamSieve now aborts the spamsieve-reader
process after 30 seconds. Previously, the process (and your fan)
would keep running forever and possibly freeze the mail client.
- Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.11 that could cause a crash during
Software Update….
- Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 that could cause a
crash.
- Added defensive coding to try to prevent a crash when saving the
corpus to disk.
- Fixed a regression that could cause an error when switching
applications.
- Fixed a regression where SpamSieve wasn’t able to reset the corpus.
- Fixed a regression where the Entourage scripts could not be
installed.
- Fixed a bug where Software Update… would continue offering updates
in the same session in which you had held down the Option key.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could crash when sending data to a helper
tool that exited unexpectedly.
- Fixed a bug where a text field in the crash reporter was truncated.
- Fixed a few small memory leaks.
- Updated the German localization.
- 2.9.20—June 3, 2015
- General
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Apple’s server-side iCloud spam filter has recently become more
aggressive. As a result, many people have been confused by the sudden
increase in messages in the Junk mailbox (rather than SpamSieve’s
Spam mailbox). iCloud’s spam filter cannot be turned off, but the
Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail? section of the
manual and the new Consolidating Spam From Multiple Filters
section explain some of the options for dealing with this.
- SpamSieve’s launch agent process no longer runs when Apple Mail is
not running, which should reduce overall memory use.
- Dates in the log are now shown in the local time zone.
- Trained entries in the log now include the sender’s address.
- The Apple Mail plug-in installer now checks that file ownership is
enabled on the volume containing your home folder. This is necessary
for proper operation of SpamSieve’s launch agent and, thus, launching
and training from Apple Mail.
- When the trial period is over, the alert now has a Help button
that opens the instructions for uninstalling.
- The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command is now available even
after the trial period has ended.
- Improved the fonts in the About and Software Update windows.
- Added accessibility labels in the Software Update new News
windows.
- Added the following sections to the manual:
- Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Reinstalling a Fresh Copy is now its own section of the manual,
and SpamSieve will direct you there if it finds that one of its files
is missing.
- AppleScript
-
- Error Handling
- SpamSieve will now recreate the log file’s folder if it
unexpectedly disappears after the application has launched,
perhaps due to CleanApp. If this affects you, SpamSieve will make
a note in the Console log.
- Improved SpamSieve’s error handling and recovery when there is an
error creating or updating the log file.
- The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command will now retry if
there’s an error communicating with Mail and report a better
error if it still doesn’t succeed.
- When training from Apple Mail, SpamSieve will now report a better
error if it detects that the necessary SpamSieveHelper
application is not running.
- If SpamSieve detects that one of its files is missing, i.e. that
the application is damaged, it now presents a better error
message.
- When there is an error reading the corpus or history database,
the error alert now has a clickable Help button instead of inline
URL text.
- The Entourage scripts can now log errors to Console.
- SpamSieve will now log an error if it’s not installed in the
Applications folder, as this can prevent proper functioning with
Airmail (due to sandbox restrictions).
- Improved the error message if Apple Mail can’t launch SpamSieve.
- Errors for corrupt files now link to the relevant Web pages that
explain how to fix them.
- Improved the error message when you’re using a version of SpamSieve
that’s too old for your version of Apple Mail.
- Improved error reporting when a temporary folder cannot be
created.
- Improved the error message for incorrect serial numbers.
- SpamSieve now reports permissions information if there’s an error
opening the statistics database.
- Bug Fixes
- Worked around a bug where Microsoft Outlook does not always
correctly return a message’s source. This could lead to spam
messages being classified as good because SpamSieve had no
information to work from. To get this fix, choose Install
Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.
- Worked around a text conversion bug in Mac OS X 10.10.3.
- SpamSieve will no longer repeatedly try to fix a file’s owner if
ownership is ignored on the volume.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could report an internal error if it
received an Apple event while in the process of quitting.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an internal error writing to
SpamSieve’s log file when the application was quitting.
- Fixed a regression where the Outlook 14 installer didn’t properly
migrate installed script files.
- Fixed a bug abbreviating long rules in the log.
- Date formatters now use the POSIX local where appropriate.
- 2.9.19—January 27, 2015
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.10.2. It’s easiest if you
update to SpamSieve 2.9.19 before updating to Mac OS X 10.10.2.
In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- To make future OS updates smoother:
- You can wait to update Mac OS X until a new version of SpamSieve
has been released. The latest compatibility information is always
available at the top of the SpamSieve Support page. To prevent Mac
OS X from updating itself without asking you, go to the App
Store section of System Preferences and make sure that
Install OS X updates is unchecked.
- You can sign up to receive the public beta versions of
SpamSieve. Then you will likely already have a compatible version
of SpamSieve installed when the OS update first becomes available.
- Added the Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command in the
SpamSieve menu.
- SpamSieve is now more aggressive about auto-training whitelist
rules to prevent false positives.
- SpamSieve is now 33% faster at reading the corpus and 48% faster at
writing it. This improves the launch time and overall application
responsiveness.
- The Apple Mail Train as Good command is better at determining
when a message is inside of a junk mailbox with a localized name.
- The Apple Mail - Remote Training
script no longer times out when there are lots of messages in the
training mailbox. It also has new options for changing the name of
the spam mailbox and for enabling debug logging.
- The Apple Mail - SaneBox and
Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox
scripts now set the junk status and color for spam messages.
- Added the following sections to the manual:
- Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Added improved instructions for
installing and running supplemental AppleScripts.
- If Outlook reports an error when creating the Uncertain Junk
category, SpamSieve now explains how you can create it manually.
- SpamSieve can now log the contents of the LaunchAgents folder
if there is a problem.
- When the SpamSieve application is damaged and needs to be
reinstalled, it now links to some more extensive online
instructions for doing so.
- Improved the error reporting when SpamSieve’s log file can’t be
written to.
- If there’s an error removing the old copy of the Apple Mail
plug-in and fixing the file permissions/ownership doesn’t help,
SpamSieve now instructs you how to remove the file manually.
- Improved the text in the Welcome window. Also, the window is
now shown later in the launch process so that the referenced
Help menu is available.
- The About SpamSieve window now uses the new system font on
Mac OS X 10.10.
- The About SpamSieve window now uses the system language names
when crediting localizers, to reduce the number of strings that
localizers need to keep up-to-date.
- Increased the font size in the Software Update… window on Mac
OS X 10.10.
- Added the ShowResetAlert user default to show the corpus/history
reset window if the user can’t hold down the proper modifier keys.
- Added QuitMailWhenMacSleeps to the esoteric preferences. This
quits Mail when the Mac sleeps and relaunches it when the Mac wakes.
This works around an OS bug that can cause messages not to be moved
to the Spam mailbox if Mail received them right after the Mac
woke from sleep.
- Worked around a string encoding bug in Mac OS X 10.10.
- Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in would cause unnecessary
messages about LSUIElement and the sandbox to be logged to
Console.
- Fixed a bug where a change in system font metrics caused some
text in the Preferences and Statistics windows to be
truncated.
- Fixed spurious log messages from SpamSieveHelper when running on Mac
OS X 10.10.
- Added defensive check to prevent trying to fix the ownership of
certain folders.
- Fixed a bug where toolbar buttons in the rules and corpus windows
were always enabled when running on Mac OS X 10.10.
- Worked around an OS bug that prevented bookmark files from being
resolved.
- Worked around an OS bug that could cause SpamSieve’s log file to
be created in the wrong location.
- Updated the German and Spanish localizations.
- 2.9.18—November 17, 2014
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.10.1. It’s easiest if you
update to SpamSieve 2.9.18 before updating to Mac OS X 10.10.1.
(To prevent Mac OS X from updating itself without asking you, go
to the App Store section of System Preferences and make sure
that Install OS X updates is unchecked.) In any case, if you
don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be
sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve
menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail
will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting
SpamSieve.
- Added preliminary support for Microsoft Outlook 15.3
(part of Office 365). This is described in the Setting Up Outlook 2016
section of the manual.
- Added the following sections to the manual:
- Improved the following sections of the manual (among others):
- The Apple Mail - Discard Spam script
is faster and more reliable for large mailboxes.
- Improved the error reporting when writing to the log file and the
disk is full.
- SpamSieve is better able to recover from incorrect launch agent file
ownership.
- The Quit when mail client quits feature now works with Airmail 2.
- The Blocklist and Whitelist windows now display the number of
rules using commas if there are more than 1,000.
- The Purchase… window now accepts serial numbers copied and pasted
from a PDF of an order confirmation, after the browser has
transliterated the dashes.
- Updated the toolbar icons for Mac OS X 10.10.
- Updated the disk image icon for Mac OS X 10.10.
- Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.10 that could cause SpamSieve to
freeze at launch.
- Worked around a string encoding conversion bug in Mac OS X 10.10.
- The crash reporter now reports more information if it couldn’t find
any matching crash log files.
- 2.9.17—October 16, 2014
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. It’s easiest if you update to
SpamSieve 2.9.17 before updating to Mac OS X 10.10. In any case,
if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message
menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the
SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Added the following sections to the manual:
- Improved the following sections of the manual (among others):
- Updating OS versions is smoother since SpamSieve is better at finding
disabled copies of its Apple Mail plug-in.
- Worked around a change in Mac OS X that could cause the Quit
when mail client quits feature to not work when running in Japanese.
- Improved the crash reporter’s error reporting.
- Improved debug logging for the Apple Mail training scripts.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could crash if there was an error writing
to its log file.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would, in rare cases, try to change the
ownership of a temporary folder unnecessarily.
- We need help keeping SpamSieve’s Japanese localization up-to-date.
Please contact spamsieve@c-command.com if you’re interested.
- 2.9.16—September 17, 2014
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.5. It’s easiest if you update
to SpamSieve 2.9.16 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.5. In any
case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in
not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.10
Yosemite.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Updated the Outlook and Entourage scripts for compatibility with the
upcoming Mac OS X 10.0. If you’re using one of those mail clients,
you should update the scripts by choosing Install Outlook Scripts
or Install Entourage Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.
- Updated the Apple Mail - Discard Spam,
Apple Mail - Move If Spam,
Apple Mail - Remote Training, Apple Mail - Save Spam, and
PowerMail - Uncertain Spam Condition
scripts to work around a bug in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.10. If you are
using these scripts, you will need to download and install fresh copies
of them.
- Updated the Apple Mail - Remote Training,
Apple Mail - SaneBox, and
Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox
scripts to work around a problem with duplicate messages
created from deleted messages that Mail had not expunged. If you are
using these scripts, you will need to download and install fresh
copies of them.
- Added a new method of hiding SpamSieve’s Dock icon that doesn’t
require editing the Info.plist file. For more information, see
the How can I hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon? section of the manual.
- Added the Faster Apple Mail Training, Why don’t I see the
SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu?, and Recommended
Apple Mail Customizations (Mac OS X 10.8 and Earlier) sections of
the manual.
- Improved the Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages, Changing
the Name of the Spam Mailbox sections, Show Blocklist, Show
Whitelist, Requirements, Correct All Mistakes, Separate Spam
Mailboxes for Each Account, Use macOS Contacts,
Redirecting Good Messages to Another Account, Apple Mail
Customization, How should I configure the junk filter on my mail
server?, Updating From a Previous Version, and Uninstalling
SpamSieve sections of the manual.
- SpamSieve is better at repairing folder ownership and permissions.
- SpamSieve is better able to recover from errors when creating
temporary folders.
- Made lots of code modernizations.
- By default, training a message as good in Apple Mail no longer clears
its colored flags. This can be adjusted using the
AppleMailTrainGoodClearFlags option in the esoteric
preferences.
- Esoteric preferences links are now directly clickable in the Apple
Help and PDF manual.
- Worked around a problem where Apple Mail could hang at launch if
MailTags was installed.
- Removed spurious warnings about extra Apple Mail preferences files.
- Improved error reporting when SpamSieve can’t connect to the update
server.
- Removed the Option-key workaround to have SpamSieve try to update the
Apple Mail plug-in’s Info.plist file (based on installed version
of Mail) because it’s no longer effective.
- Fixed a bug reporting an error from running a compiled AppleScript.
- Improved the crash reporter.
- Fixed a crash when reporting file errors.
- We need help keeping SpamSieve’s Japanese localization up-to-date.
Please contact spamsieve@c-command.com if you’re interested.
- 2.9.15—June 30, 2014
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.4. It’s easiest if you update
to SpamSieve 2.9.15 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.4. In any case,
if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message
menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the
SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.10
Yosemite.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- SpamSieve now requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later. Versions of
SpamSieve for Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier are
available.
- Modernized lots of code and removed old code that’s no longer needed
for compatibility with legacy OS versions.
- Made changes so that SpamSieve launches faster, especially when
cfprefsd is slow to respond.
- Added the Why are messages marked as spam in Apple Mail but not
moved? section to the manual.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Install Outlook Scripts command
to fail if Parallels Desktop was installed and its
stub application for the Windows version of Outlook was enabled.
- The Apple Mail - SaneBox script
now reports errors to Console (since Mail was suppressing them) and
no longer times out for very large mailboxes.
- The Software Update… feature is better at explaining what you can
do if installation fails.
- Adjusted the way the Purchase… window displays the remaining demo
time to try to make it clearer.
- Improved the reporting of file permissions errors and damaged sound
files.
- Improved the handling of localized strings when the application is
damaged.
- Fixed a bug where the release notes in the Software Update… window
were shown in the wrong font.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would auto-train even if you had
unchecked all of the filters.
- Updated the Dutch, Japanese, and Spanish localizations.
- We need help keeping SpamSieve’s Japanese localization up-to-date.
Please contact spamsieve@c-command.com if you’re interested.
- 2.9.14—May 15, 2014
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.3. It’s easiest if you update
to SpamSieve 2.9.14 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.3. In any case,
if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message
menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the
SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not
installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Added the Does SpamSieve protect me from viruses? and Why does
SpamSieve always need an update when macOS is updated? sections to
the manual.
- Improved the Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail, Correct All
Mistakes, Sending in the SpamSieve Log File, Using a Spam
Mailbox on the Server, Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple
Mail?, and Checking the Mailsmith Setup sections of the manual,
as well as various instructional alerts and error messages.
- The Import Addresses… command no longer has a file size limit.
- SpamSieve no longer prompts to access the system contacts database if
you have Use macOS Contacts unchecked.
- Made some changes to make SpamSieve launch faster, especially when
cfprefsd is slow to respond.
- Rewrote the Apple Mail - Discard Spam
script to not rely on GUI scripting and to avoid deleting messages
that were already in the trash.
- The Setting Up Postbox command works better with pre-release
versions of Postbox.
- SpamSieve now checks the permissions on more of Apple Mail’s folders.
- If an error occurs during Install Outlook Scripts, SpamSieve will
now try to determine whether this was because Microsoft Outlook was
not installed properly.
- If your copy of Apple Mail is damaged, SpamSieve will now report
this, but it will still let you install the plug-in.
- The training commands in Apple Mail work better with localized
mailbox names.
- Added more logging for the Outlook Train as Good command.
- The images in the PDF manual and Apple Help are now
Retina-resolution.
- Adjusted the font sizes in the PDF manual.
- 2.9.13—February 25, 2014
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.2. It’s easiest if you
update to SpamSieve 2.9.13 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.2. In any
case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in
not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
without consulting SpamSieve.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- On Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple Mail is slower at moving messages
to the Spam mailbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam
and the inbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Good. This
version of SpamSieve includes some changes to speed this up. It also
includes workarounds to move messages faster by using GUI scripting
instead of regular AppleScript. To enable the workarounds, please see
the AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting and
AppleMailTrainGoodGUIScripting options in the Esoteric
Preferences section of the manual.
- Documented the AppleMailPlugInSetIsJunk esoteric preference, as
it can be used to speed up filtering on Mac OS X 10.9.
- Improved the Setting Up Airmail section of the manual to recommend
not deleting messages from the Spam mailbox when using Airmail
1.3.1 (223).
- Added the Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail?
section to the manual.
- Improved the Setting Up a MailMate Drone and iPhone Spam
Filtering sections of the manual.
- The AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting esoteric preference now works
if you’ve selected the trash as your mailbox for trained spam
messages.
- Optimized and fixed a possible Apple Mail crash when using the
Setting Up an Apple Mail Drone configuration.
- SpamSieve is now able to log more diagnostic information to help
track down problems with Apple Mail.
- When a Mac OS X update disables SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in, and
your Mac is running in a language other than English, SpamSieve is
better able to detect this and auto-reinstall the plug-in.
- SpamSieve now cleans up empty folders of disabled Apple Mail bundles.
- When training messages from Microsoft Outlook, SpamSieve now logs
errors to the Console. You can also enable extended error logging via
the OutlookScriptDebug default.
- 2.9.12—December 16, 2013
- Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.1. It’s easiest if you
update to SpamSieve 2.9.12 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.1. In any
case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s
Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In
from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in
not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
- On Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple Mail is slower at moving messages
to the Spam mailbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as
Spam. SpamSieve includes a workaround to move messages faster by
using GUI scripting instead of regular AppleScript. To enable the
workaround, please see the AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting option
in the Esoteric Preferences section of the manual.
- Versions 1.2.1 and later of the Airmail
e-mail client include support for SpamSieve. The Setting Up Airmail
section of the manual describes how to use SpamSieve with Airmail.
- It is now possible to set up a spam filtering drone using the
MailMate e-mail client. This is described in
the Setting Up a MailMate Drone section of the manual.
- The Flash PowerMate feature is now compatible with (and requires)
version 3.0 of the Griffin PowerMate software.
- You can now hold down the Option key when you click Check Now in the
Software Update… window to always download the latest version,
even if your version is already up-to-date. This is an easy way to
download and re-install a fresh copy of SpamSieve if yours is
damaged.
- Added the AppleMailTrainGoodClearFlags esoteric preference,
for people who use colored flags on their spam messages for purposes
other than indicating the spam level.
- If Microsoft Outlook is not able to retrieve a message’s source,
SpamSieve will now log the message’s subject to Console.
- Worked around an OS bug that could cause a crash when SpamSieve was
processing certain types of multi-part e-mail messages.
- Improved various error messages.
- Tried to work around a crash by disabling JavaScript in the release
notes view.
- 2.9.11—November 7, 2013
- Works with the Mail Update for Mavericks 1.0.
- Added a workaround for some rare cases where SpamSieve’s commands
were not showing in Apple Mail’s Message menu.
- Updated the Apple Mail - Discard Spam
script.
- Added some defensive coding to protect against a bug in
_NSDispatchData that could cause a crash on Mavericks.
- Made various updates and improvements to the manual.
- 2.9.10—October 22, 2013
- SpamSieve is now compatible with the updated GM build of Mac OS X
10.9 Mavericks. It is recommended that you update to SpamSieve 2.9.10
before installing Mavericks. If you’ve updated to Mavericks first,
and you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message
menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the
SpamSieve menu.
- The How can I hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon? section of the manual
has been updated for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
- Improved various other parts of the manual and Read Me.
- Tried to work around a problem where the Outlook installer received
an error from the system when the Mac was running in French.
- 2.9.9—October 7, 2013
- SpamSieve is now compatible with the GM build of Mac OS X 10.9
Mavericks. It is recommended that you update to SpamSieve 2.9.9
before installing Mavericks. If you’ve updated to Mavericks first,
and you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message
menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the
SpamSieve menu.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Microsoft Outlook 2011’s notification sounds are now available in
SpamSieve’s Notification preferences.
- Added the Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox
script. When it’s not possible to turn off
a server-side junk filter (e.g. iCloud’s), this lets SpamSieve save you
from mistakes that the server junk filter made by moving any messages
that SpamSieve thinks are good back to the inbox. It will also
consolidate the spam messages from all the accounts into a single spam
mailbox (the same one where SpamSieve is already putting your spam).
- Can now repair the ownership and permissions of the SpamSieve and
Apple Mail preferences files if needed. This fixes problems where
SpamSieve would lose its registration information or Apple Mail
wouldn’t show the SpamSieve menu commands.
- Fixed some problems where the Open Window command in Apple Mail
was not available or did not always open the specified window.
- 2.9.8—September 12, 2013
- SpamSieve is now compatible with Mac OS X 10.8.5.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- The Train as Good command in Apple Mail now considers the
message’s CC recipients when determining the proper account inbox.
- The installer is better at working around incorrect Apple Mail folder
permissions.
- Improved the Why is SpamSieve not catching my spam?, Open Log,
Setting Up Outlook, SpamSieve and Multiple Macs, and various
other sections of the manual.
- The AppleScript for Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone runs faster
now.
- Automatic software updates no longer fail if Hazel is set to move files in the
Downloads folder.
- The Help menu now includes direct links to important sections of
the manual.
- Removed unused code from the Apple Mail plug-in.
- 2.9.7—May 1, 2013
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- SpamSieve no longer links against AppleScriptKit. This removes some GUI
scripting functionality (which is now largely available by other means)
but works around an OS bug that could prevent SpamSieve from launching.
- Worked around a bug in Apple Mail’s iCloud rule syncing.
- SpamSieve is better at moving trained messages when Outlook has lost
track of the special Junk E-mail folder.
- Fixed a problem where Apple Mail couldn’t communicate with SpamSieve when
the file permissions were incorrect.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve couldn’t load any addresses from Outlook if
it reported an error while getting the e-mail address of a contact.
- Fixed a bug editing counts in the Corpus window (due to suspected
64-bit OS bug).
- Added more checks that the folders SpamSieve relies upon have the proper
permissions.
- Improved error reporting for Apple Mail, Growl, and more.
- Improved handling of file permissions errors.
- The Apple Mail drone script now sets the junk status.
- Wrote a script that
allows SpamSieve to filter messages (in Apple Mail) that have been
organized by SaneBox.
- Improved the Japanese localization.
- SpamSieve now requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
- 2.9.6—December 19, 2012
- Worked around a bug in Mac OS
X 10.8.2 that could cause spam operations in Postbox to be very slow. If you’re using
Postbox, you can update your SpamSieve plug-in by following steps 1
through 6 in the Setting Up Postbox section of the manual.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- SpamSieve now understands that @icloud.com, @me.com, and
@mac.com are equivalent, so it’s better at finding the proper
inbox in Apple Mail when you train a message as good. (For non-Apple
IMAP and POP mail accounts, you can define aliases manually, as
before. Go to the Accounts tab of Mail’s preferences and enter
all the addresses—separated by commas—in the Email Address field.)
- Customers have reported that Sync Services does not work reliably on
Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Thus, rather than having Outlook use
Sync Services to sync its contacts with the system address book,
SpamSieve now offers a feature to load the Outlook address book
directly. (This ensures that SpamSieve doesn’t mark messages from
people in your address book as spam.) Outlook users are encouraged to
make sure that Use Entourage/Outlook address book is checked in
SpamSieve’s preferences and to click the Load button. For more
information, see the Use Entourage/Outlook address book section of
the manual.
- SpamSieve is now better able to handle invalid data received from a
mail program.
- When Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server, SpamSieve is better at
handling errors from Mail that could cause a trained spam message to
go to the local spam mailbox instead.
- Training a message as good in Apple Mail now removes any flags, in
case you were using Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail.
- Added How should I configure the junk filter on my mail server? to
the FAQ.
- The Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages section of the manual
now includes instructions for Outlook.
- Worked around various file permissions problems that could prevent
training in Apple Mail from working.
- Worked around a bug in Migration Assistant that could prevent
SpamSieve from working properly with Apple Mail.
- The plug-in and scripts installers are better able to handle
non-standard folder structures.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve was unable to see the contents of certain
malformed messages, leading to poor filtering accuracy.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes setting the date in the Statistics
window didn’t work when SpamSieve was running in 64-bit mode.
- Fixed a regression where where messages trained as good in Apple Mail
didn’t move back to the inbox if you were using a local spam mailbox
and no inbox matched the message’s recipients.
- Made various improvements to the manual.
- 2.9.5—September 21, 2012
- Updated the Apple Mail plug-in to work with Security Update 2012-004
(Snow Leopard) for Mac OS X
10.6.8. If, after installing this update, you don’t see the SpamSieve
commands in Mail’s Message menu, it may be necessary to go to the
SpamSieve menu and choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In.
- The AppleScripts for controlling the Griffin PowerMate seem to trigger a
crashing bug in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Thus, SpamSieve’s Flash PowerMate
option has been turned off. You can try re-enabling it in the preferences if
desired.
- When training a message as good from Apple Mail, SpamSieve is better
at figuring out which account it came from.
- Worked around problems on some Macs that could prevent SpamSieve from
receiving training commands from Apple Mail on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
- Import Blocklist Regex Rules
is a sample AppleScript that shows how to create blocklist rules using
the contents of a text file.
- Made various improvements to the manual.
- 2.9.4—September 4, 2012
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Revised and expanded the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to make
it easier for people to find, fix, and report problems.
- Fixed a problem where SpamSieve could crash when processing messages
from Apple Mail on OS X 10.8, particularly after the Mac had awakened from
sleep.
- Worked around an issue on OS X 10.8 that could cause training SpamSieve
from Apple Mail to be very slow.
- The Train as Good command in Outlook will now move messages from the
trash back to the inbox.
- Made various updates to the manual for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, for
example clarifying that SpamSieve works (via Apple Mail) during a Power
Nap.
- Worked around a problem where Apple Mail couldn’t communicate with
SpamSieve if the /etc/hosts file was damaged.
- Improved the error reporting when SpamSieve detects that one of its
files is damaged.
- Added defensive coding to try to track down a notification icon problem
when running in French.
- You can now set the MJTSoundLoadFromApps default to false if you
want to prevent SpamSieve from looking for notification sounds installed
by other applications, e.g. to prevent mounting an encrypted Microsoft
User Data folder.
- Fixed a bug handling errors if a software update failed; if it
succeeded, the .dmg file is now deleted to reduce clutter.
- After purchasing, SpamSieve used to show your user image to indicate
that it had been successfully personalized. It now shows a generic
checkmark to avoid prompting you for Contacts access on OS X 10.8.
- Added an icon for the crash reporter, since it’s now displayed under OS
X 10.8.
- Fixed a bug where Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.5 would log (harmless)
errors about _NSAutoreleaseNoPool.
- Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in sometimes logged confusing
error messages about not being able to launch SpamSieve even though it
was already launched.
- Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in reported the wrong installation
path in an error message when running on OS X 10.8.
- 2.9.3—July 19, 2012
- Added support for the forthcoming Mac OS X 10.7.5.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent SpamSieve from auto-launching on the
forthcoming OS X 10.8.
- SpamSieve is now able to recover from certain unexpected system errors
on OS X 10.8.
- Fixed a layout bug in the German-localized Statistics window.
- Improved the Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages instructions.
- SpamSieve now tells the system that it can use the integrated GPU, which
should reduce battery use on newer MacBook Pros.
- SpamSieve’s disk image background is now displayed at Retina quality on
eligible Macs running Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8. (On Mac OS X 10.6, due to
an OS bug, it will incorrectly display at double size.)
- Fixed a regression where SpamSieve’s disk image icon didn’t display
properly.
- 2.9.2—July 5, 2012
- Improved compatibility with the forthcoming OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
- The recommended condition for the Apple Mail rule is now Every
Message rather than Message Type Is Mail. SpamSieve will
auto-update your rules at launch on Mac OS X 10.7 if Mail is running.
- SpamSieve is better at detecting a certain type of tricky spam message.
- Worked around an OS bug that prevented SpamSieve from properly analyzing
some message attachments.
- False negative files now have the .eml extension so that they work
with Quick Look, etc.
- The Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone section of the manual has been
updated with simpler instructions for Apple Mail and new instructions
for setting up a drone using Microsoft Outlook 2011.
- Added the Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server section of the manual
(for Apple Mail).
- Updated various graphics for retina displays.
- If the Apple Mail plug-in cannot be installed due to a folder ownership
problem, SpamSieve will now ask for an administrator password to try to
fix the folder for you.
- Reverted to version 1.2.3 of the Growl SDK to avoid problems with high
CPU usage, internal errors, and crashes.
- Improved SpamSieve’s reporting of unexpected errors as well as script
errors from Apple Mail.
- SpamSieve no longer responds at all to certain invalid commands. This
should work around an OS bug that could lead to crashes.
- The crash reporter can now make recommendations for you based on the
contents of the crash log.
- Added a link to the forum in the Help menu.
- 2.9.1—April 26, 2012
- Added support for Microsoft Outlook 2011 SP2 (a.k.a. 14.2.x). If
SpamSieve can detect that you were using Outlook 2011 before, and that
SP2 has been installed, SpamSieve will auto-update its scripts
automatically. Otherwise, you can choose Install Outlook Scripts from
the SpamSieve menu. Either way, the SpamSieve rules in Outlook will
continue to work without modification.
- SpamSieve now tries to detect whether its Apple Mail plug-in is damaged
and auto-heal the installed copy if necessary.
- If there’s an error updating SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in, it now
reports more information to try to diagnose the problem.
- If the Apple Mail plug-in detects that it’s damaged, it will alert the
user to download and install a fresh copy.
- SpamSieve now checksums the Outlook script files (both the installed and
built-in copies) to detect whether they are damaged.
- Made a change to eliminate a particular cause of false positives for some
users.
- SpamSieve no longer triggers Mac OS X’s “accept incoming network
connections” firewall dialog.
- Added some exception guards to work around bugs in the Growl SDK.
- When an unexpected error occurs and no stack trace is available,
SpamSieve will now try to report the approximate location.
- Improved the What information should I include when I report a
problem? section of the manual.
- 2.9—April 3, 2012
- Added support for upcoming versions of Mac OS X.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- SpamSieve is now code-signed using a Developer ID certificate for
Gatekeeper.
- When training an Exchange message as good in Apple Mail, SpamSieve is
better at moving it to the proper inbox.
- Processing incoming messages with Outlook is more efficient. To take
advantage of this change, choose Install Outlook Scripts from the
SpamSieve menu.
- If you’ve used the SpamSieve - Change Settings command in Apple Mail
to tell SpamSieve not to use a local spam mailbox, training a message as
spam will now try to move the message to a spam mailbox on the same
server account, rather than always using the first account.
- Added support for training messages as spam via Herald (version 2.1.2 and
later), a notification plug-in for Apple Mail.
- When sorting spam messages by color in Apple Mail, you can now use
Grey as a synonym for Gray.
- The score script command has a new auto training parameter that
can be used to override the setting in the preferences on a
case-by-case basis. This might be useful, for example, if you’re writing
an AppleScript to triage messages that have already been classified, and
you just want to get SpamSieve’s opinion without having to make any
corrections.
- Adjusted the drone AppleScripts so that they’re easier to
troubleshoot.
- If Apple Mail gives SpamSieve empty data for a message, the plug-in now
assumes the message is good and does not pass it on to SpamSieve for
analysis.
- Added support for Growl notifications via GNTP (requires Mac OS X 10.7
or later).
- SpamSieve is better at handling file permission errors.
- SpamSieve is better at handling errors when running helper tools.
- Improved SpamSieve’s ability to still function when the application
package is damaged.
- Added the AddStandardRules esoteric preference, which lets you
prevent SpamSieve from creating its built-in blocklist and whitelist
rules if you prefer to manage the rules yourself.
- Fixed a bug that could reduce SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy for some
messages with attached files.
- Made various improvements to the documentation.
- Updated the German localization.
- 2.8.8—November 17, 2011
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Added support for Postbox 3.0.
- Added support for Growl 1.3.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- The Exclude my addresses feature now lets you specify
additional addresses via Terminal, if you don’t want to clutter
your “Me” card in Address Book.
- The Apple Mail plug-in installer is more resilient to
permissions errors.
- Added example of using colored flags to sort spam messages
in Apple Mail by spamminess.
- Added some logging to detect obscure errors when loading
SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in.
- Improved the French localization.
- 2.8.7—August 31, 2011
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- SpamSieve now runs as a 64-bit application on Mac OS X 10.7
Lion. This allows for faster launch times and reduced overall
system memory use if you are running exclusively 64-bit
applications. It also prevents problems caused by buggy input
manager haxies. You can use the Finder’s Get Info window to
set SpamSieve to run in 32-bit mode if you want to play classic
Mac OS notification sounds or to reduce the memory use of
SpamSieve itself.
- When training an Apple Mail message in the Spam mailbox as
good, SpamSieve is now better able to match it up with the
proper inbox.
- Offloaded more PDF processing to the helper tool so that
SpamSieve itself doesn’t crash if you receive a message with a
corrupt PDF attachment.
- Made the Apple Mail plug-in installer more robust and better at
reporting errors.
- An error finding the built-in copy of SpamSieve’s Eudora plug-in
will no longer prevent SpamSieve from launching, unless it
actually needs to install the plug-in.
- Entourage is supposed to create the Entourage Script Menu
Items folder, but for extra robustness SpamSieve will now
create it if it’s missing.
- If SpamSieve’s PDF reader detects that the CTLoader input
manager is loaded, it now logs a warning that this may cause
SpamSieve to hang.
- Tried to work around an unconfirmed issue that could prevent
SpamSieve from processing the first few Apple Mail messages on
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
- Fixed a bug with re-personalizing the application via URL.
- Clarified the Do an Initial Training section of the manual.
- Updated the Import Addresses… instructions for Microsoft
Outlook.
- The Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone section of the manual
now includes instructions for setting up a drone for multiple
mail accounts.
- The manual now explains how to open the Library folder on
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
- 2.8.6—July 6, 2011
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
- Added support for Postbox 2.5.
- Updated the Setting Up MailMate instructions for the new
preferences in MailMate 1.1.2.
- Updated the Setting Up Outlook instructions for Microsoft
Office 2011 Service Pack 1.
- Updated the Setting Up Postbox instructions to ensure that
messages that you train as spam are moved to the junk mailbox or
trash.
- Worked around a rare OS/hardware condition that could prevent
SpamSieve from launching.
- The Apple Mail plug-in is better at reporting errors when it’s
unable to fully load itself.
- Made various other clarifications to the manual.
- Adjusted the help page titles to fit better in the menu and
search results.
- 2.8.5—March 1, 2011
- Improved SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Improved compatibility with the Thunderbolt MacBook Pros and
pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Freron Software’s MailMate now works
with SpamSieve, as described in the Setting Up MailMate
section of the manual.
- Whitelisting Previous Recipients now works with Microsoft
Outlook 2011.
- The Train as Good command can now move spam messages out of
the spam folder when running a localized version of Microsoft
Outlook 2011.
- SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in helper now runs as 64-bit on Mac
OS X 10.6, where possible, to prevent input manager haxies from
interfering with the training commands.
- Added a workaround to prevent SpamSieve from hanging if the
address book database is damaged.
- Clarified the text in the Welcome and Purchase windows.
- Improved the instructions for using Microsoft Outlook and
Entourage with Exchange accounts.
- Updated the Setting Up Postbox section of the manual.
- Made various improvements to the documentation.
- Updated the Danish and Spanish localizations.
- 2.8.4—October 13, 2010
- SpamSieve now integrates with Microsoft Outlook 2011.
For more information, see the Setting Up Outlook section of
the manual.
- SpamSieve now integrates with Postbox, an enhanced version of
Thunderbird. For more information, see the Setting Up Postbox
section of the manual.
- Adjusted SpamSieve’s tokenizer to improve the filtering
accuracy.
- The Train as Good command in Apple Mail is better at moving
messages in the spam folder or trash back to the inbox.
- Fixed a regression where the whitelist and blocklist windows
wouldn’t open when running SpamSieve under certain
localizations.
- Improved the localizations.
- 2.8.3—August 31, 2010
- Adjusted SpamSieve’s tokenizer to improve the filtering
accuracy.
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Apple Mail.
- MailForge
now works with SpamSieve, as described in the Setting Up
MailForge section of the manual.
- Made some changes to better support the upcoming Microsoft
Outlook 2011. (Full support will come when Office ships.)
- Added various updates and clarifications to the manual.
- Fixed a regression where SpamSieve wouldn’t be able to install
its Apple Mail plug-in if Mail’s folder had been redirected
using an alias.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would sometimes quit when coming out
of trial mode.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the Hits column in a rules
window couldn’t be resized.
- Worked around an OS bug that could cause an internal error when
reporting a corpus error.
- Made various modernizations to SpamSieve’s code and interface
files.
- The Apple Mail plug-in now shows up with the proper name in
Mail Plugin Manager.
- Updated the disk image layout.
- 2.8.2—May 25, 2010
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Added Dutch, Italian, and Swedish localizations.
- Made various code improvements and modernizations.
- SpamSieve is better able to recover from certain types of
damaged corpus files.
- Updated the Setting Up Eudora section of the manual.
- Improved the layout of the Software Update… window.
- Adjusted the packaging of the disk image and the installation
instructions.
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when parsing messages with
an invalid Date header.
- Fixed a regression where SpamSieve would sometimes bring up an
alert sheet to report that you already had the latest version.
- Fixed a crash in the software updater.
- 2.8.1—March 24, 2010
- Fixed a regression in the SQLite build that could cause
SpamSieve to crash when running on a PowerPC-based Mac.
- 2.8—March 24, 2010
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Adjusted the SpamSieve - Train as Good command in Apple Mail
to reduce confusion. Training a message as good now will only
move the message into the inbox of an enabled account. If no
account matches the message or if the proper account is
disabled, it will move the message into the inbox of the first
enabled account (even if it doesn’t match). Thus, the message
will always move out of the Spam mailbox, and it will no
longer seem to disappear because it was moved into an inbox that
was hidden.
- Made various code modernizations.
- Apple Mail now auto-launches SpamSieve sooner, to speed up the
filtering of the first messages.
- Improved the support for server-side Spam mailboxes in Apple
Mail.
- Clarified the instructions in the Do an Initial Training
section of the manual.
- Added the How do I make SpamSieve catch spams sent from my own
address? section to the manual.
- Expanded the Correct All Mistakes section of the manual.
- Improved the Apple Mail troubleshooting instructions.
- Improved the styling of the Apple Help.
- Improved SpamSieve’s launching speed.
- Fixed a bug where, in rare circumstances, SpamSieve didn’t
filter all of the first batch of messages when using Apple Mail
on Mac OS X 10.6.
- SpamSieve will now warn you if it looks like its Apple Mail
plug-in has been damaged by an application slimming utility.
This could lead to Mail continually reporting that the plug-in
was incompatible.
- SpamSieve will now complain if it looks like you’ve manually
installed the Apple Mail plug-in in the wrong folder instead of
using SpamSieve’s installer.
- Made a change to try to work around a bug in Apple Mail that
could make training a message as good create a duplicate copy of
the message.
- Improved the Purchase window to reduce confusion about the
demo period, serial numbers, and the number of seats that you’ve
purchased.
- Modernized the Software Update window and code.
- Changed the way the Software Update feature finds the
downloads folder on Mac OS X 10.5 and later because sometimes
the one that Internet Config returned would be invalid or
unwanted.
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would crash when processing certain
invalid URLs.
- Fixed an error where a newly added whitelist/blocklist rule
might not be auto-selected.
- Removed the Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese localizations because
they were out of date. If you would like to update the
translation for one of these languages, please contact
spamsieve@c-command.com.
- 2.7.7—October 20, 2009
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Made some changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
- Fixed a bug where the “Train as Good” command in Apple Mail
didn’t move Exchange messages back to the inbox.
- Encoded HTML mail is spam is now off by default, to reduce
the number of false positives.
- Modernized the code.
- Updated the Vietnamese localization.
- Updated the Apple Mail script for discarding spam.
- 2.7.6—September 9, 2009
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
- Expanded the Can I delete spam messages that are in the spam
folder? section of the manual.
- Fixed a bug in the Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone
instructions.
- Improved number entry in the corpus window.
- Improved the reporting of unexpected errors.
- Updated links to indicate that Mailsmith is now available from Stickshift
Software.
- Added a Console warning if the Apple Mail plug-in detects that
CTLoader is installed.
- The crash reporter works better with Mac OS X 10.6.
- Fixed a mistake in the French localization.
- 2.7.5—July 29, 2009
- Made various accuracy improvements.
- Fixed a problem where Apple Mail (running on pre-release
versions of Mac OS X 10.6) could freeze at launch if you had a
rule involving address book groups.
- Rewrote the Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone instructions.
- Added Why does the Spam mailbox in Apple Mail appear empty even
though there’s a number beside it? to the frequently asked questions.
- Updated the Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages
instructions to include Entourage.
- The search fields are now scrollable.
- The Apple Mail plug-in is better at detecting when SpamSieve’s
Dock icon is hidden.
- Worked around a problem where Mail could crash if you had
installed two copies of the SpamSieve plug-in at the same time.
- Fixed a bug that could cause SpamSieve to freeze when applying a
whitelist/blocklist rule involving certain regular expressions.
- The crash reporter works better with pre-release versions of Mac
OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
- Fixed a bug that could prevent SpamSieve from launching.
- Updated the Dutch, Japanese, and Korean localizations.
- 2.7.4—April 13, 2009
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X
10.6 (Snow Leopard).
- SpamSieve is better able to recover from corpus files that were
damaged due to disk errors.
- Improved the Entourage installer’s error handling.
- Improved the error reporting when saving the corpus.
- Improved the troubleshooting instructions.
- Fixed a problem where messages trained as good in Apple Mail
could be moved into the inbox of a disabled account.
- Fixed a bug that could cause harmless error messages to be
logged to the Console when playing System 7 sound files.
- The crash reporter now warns before sending a report without an
e-mail address.
- You can now press Enter to click the Send Report button in
the crash reporter.
- 2.7.3—January 26, 2009
- Rewrote and restructured the manual to make the setup and
troubleshooting instructions clearer.
- Replaced the Training Tip window with an alert that’s
displayed when SpamSieve’s corpus is empty. This goes along with
the more explicit guidance that ongoing training is only
necessary to correct mistakes.
- The Entourage installer no longer asks before replacing existing
script files. If you want to customize the scripts (rare these days,
since there are so many built-in configuration options), you should use
copies with different names to avoid having SpamSieve overwrite them.
- Changed the recommended Entourage rule setup to better handle
uncertain messages. The installer now creates the Uncertain Junk
category if necessary.
- Made the Apple Mail plug-in installer more robust.
- Worked around a problem parsing certain multipart messages.
- Adjusted the built-in blocklist rules for better accuracy.
- Reduced memory usage when processing message attachments.
- Fixed a bug sorting in rules windows.
- Fixed a bug marking incoming Entourage messages as Uncertain Junk.
- Updated the localizations.
- 2.7.2—October 29, 2008
- Made various accuracy improvements.
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X
10.6 (Snow Leopard). There are now two separate versions of
SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in. Version 1.3 is for Mac OS X
10.4; version 1.4 is for Mac OS X 10.5 and later. SpamSieve will
auto-choose which one to install (or update) based on the
version of Mac OS X that you’re running.
- Added new sections to the manual about Whitelisting Previous
Recipients and iPhone Spam Filtering. Expanded the
Auto-train with incoming mail section.
- Worked around a problem where the Edit Log command would try
to open SpamSieve’s log using Script Editor if Launch Services
was confused.
- Rewrote filesystem code to improve performance and error
reporting.
- If there’s an error getting the downloads folder for a software
update, SpamSieve now defaults to Downloads rather than
Desktop.
- Worked around a problem where training (using Apple Mail on Mac
OS X 10.5) could be interrupted.
- Added Korean localization.
- Moved .nib files that don’t need localization out of the
English.lproj folder. This should make it easier to run
SpamSieve in a language other than English without changing the
default language on your Mac.
- Fixed some small memory leaks.
- Improved reporting of unexpected errors.
- Added placeholder text to the Purchase… window.
- Added Help button to the Software Update window.
- 2.7.1—June 4, 2008
- Fixed a regression in version 2.7 where SpamSieve was
slow loading certain large corpus files when running on
Mac OS X 10.5.
- Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.4 that could cause a
crash when training a message with Apple Mail.
- Made some minor accuracy improvements.
- 2.7—May 21, 2008
- Now requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
- Made a variety of accuracy improvements, focused on
dealing with obfuscations, image attachments, URLs, and
HTML.
- Improved corpus speed and memory use.
- Made various improvements to the column widths and
alignments in the rules and corpus windows, and added
alternating row colors.
- Fixed a rare problem where Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.5
might hang if you trained a message as spam while Mail
was downloading messages.
- If the OS reports an error when playing a sound as an
alert sound, SpamSieve now plays it using the normal
sound channel.
- Increased the range of possible values for the uncertain
spam threshold.
- Improved sorting of sound names in the pop-up menu.
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve wouldn’t launch if the
Microsoft User Data folder had been replaced by an
alias file that was invalid.
- No longer shows the Reset Corpus/History alert at
launch if you hold down other modifier keys in addition
to Command-Option.
- Updated the Dutch localization.
- 2.6.6—January 23, 2008
- Made various accuracy improvements.
- Rewrote internal corpus storage to work around a
performance bug in Mac OS X 10.5 that could, in some
circumstances, make SpamSieve very slow to launch.
- Worked around a problem on Mac OS X 10.5 where the Apple
Mail plug-in would sometimes try to launch multiple
copies of SpamSieve (and then they’d all self-quit,
leading to -609 errors).
- Made some internal changes so that Use Growl global
notification system works more reliably on Mac OS X
10.5.
- The Flash PowerMate notification feature now works
with version 2.1 of the PowerMate software.
- If SpamSieve’s corpus file or history database is
damaged, you can now hold down the Command and Option
keys at launch to reset them.
- Growl notifications are now posted from a background
thread, to speed up message filtering.
- Fixed bug where the open panel for the Import
Addresses… command was slow.
- Worked around a problem that could cause corruption of
SpamSieve’s Entourage scripts.
- Fixed rare crash when processing HTML messages.
- If SpamSieve is unable to install its Apple Mail plug-in,
it now does a better job of helping you complete the
installation manually.
- Integration with Apple Mail and Entourage no longer
relies on the mydefaults command-line tool, since it
had some limitations and there were occasional problems
installing it.
- The software updater is better at handling invalid
downloads folders.
- Added Dutch localization and updated the other
localizations.
- 2.6.5—November 14, 2007
- Now requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.
- Made various accuracy improvements.
- Added high-resolution version of the application icon.
- Adjusted the appearance of the status indicators (•, G,
S) for better visibility in the Leopard Dock.
- Updated the default whitelist rules.
- Updated documentation for Mac OS X 10.5.
- Updated to PCRE 7.4.
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of
Entourage 2008.
- The Train as Good command in Apple Mail now
recognizes spam mailboxes whose names end with “Spam”,
and it works with the Trash mailbox on Mac OS X 10.5.
- Worked around change in Apple Mail on Mac OS X10.5 that
could cause the Train as Spam command not to move the
messages.
- Fixed bug where the Apple Help didn’t work on Mac OS X
10.5.
- Fixed hang processing some pathological HTML spams.
- Fixed bug where Growl notification preferences got reset
if you ran SpamSieve under different localizations.
- Fixed unnecessary Console logging when loading Entourage
addresses.
- Updated Italian localization.
- 2.6.4—August 20, 2007
- Made more accuracy improvements for messages with
attachments.
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when processing
messages containing PDF attachments.
- Updated localizations.
- 2.6.3—August 3, 2007
- Made various accuracy improvements, particularly for
messages with attachments.
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac
OS X 10.5 Leopard.
- Fixed bug where the Software Update… checker didn’t
always re-check for new updates.
- Restored progress bar when loading Entourage addresses.
- Updated the localizations.
- Improved the documentation.
- Fixed help book icon.
- 2.6.2—May 4, 2007
- Made changes to prevent a crash on Mac OS X 10.4.9 when
quitting in response to a mail program quitting.
- Slight changes for better accuracy.
- Fixed regression where the Import Addresses… command
didn’t always work for text files in the default encoding.
- Blocklist and whitelist rules that use Body (any text
part) can now match text from the headers of bounced messages
(which e-mail clients often display as part of the message body).
- The Software Update… feature now checks whether the
updated version can run on your installed version of Mac OS
X.
- Better logging of messages that don’t have a sender.
- Fixed a threading bug.
- Made an optimization to the Apple Mail plug-in.
- Adjusted the setup instructions for Apple Mail to avoid
problem with the Previous Recipients list.
- Modernized the crash reporter code.
- Updated the French and German localizations.
- 2.6.1—April 9, 2007
- Fixed regression where SpamSieve wouldn’t launch if you had
a large number of Mac OS 9 sound files.
- Fixed bug where Thunderbird messages that were manually
marked as junk weren’t moved to the junk folder. If you are
using Thunderbird, first update to SpamSieve 2.6.1, then
choose Install Thunderbird Plug-In from the
SpamSieve menu to update the plug-in.
- Made change prevent crash on Mac OS X 10.4.9 when quitting
in response to a mail program quitting.
- 2.6—March 19, 2007
- SpamSieve now works with Mozilla Thunderbird.
- Improved detection of image spams and phishing messages.
- Made various message analysis improvements to increase the
accuracy of the Bayesian filter.
- AppleScripting the whitelist and blocklist is much more
efficient for scripts that access a lot of rules.
- Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X
10.5 Leopard.
- When installing a plug-in for a mail program, SpamSieve now
opens the relevant page of the Apple Help to help you
complete the installation.
- The alert when SpamSieve has auto-updated its Apple Mail
plug-in is now non-modal, so it doesn’t interfere with spam
filtering.
- The Software Update… checker now works behind an HTTP
proxy, and the auto-updater is now compatible with FileVault.
- Can now import addresses from the incorrectly encoded
.vcf files that are generated by recent versions of
Address Book.
- Growl notifications are now enabled by default.
- The Apple Mail plug-in is more robust.
- Fixed some small memory leaks.
- Made some performance optimizations to the message tokenizer.
- SpamSieve is more robust when processing incomplete messages.
- The Entourage “Train Good” command now moves messages out of
the Uncertain Spam folder.
- The Apple Mail “Train as Good” command now moves messages
out of zSpam mailboxes.
- Updated to PCRE 7.0.
- 2.5—October 30, 2006
- Made lots of changes to the parser and classifiers to
improve accuracy, especially for HTML and image messages.
- The in-memory corpus representation is much more efficient,
which should lead to lower memory use and greater speed.
- Rewrote the Software Update… feature. When a new version is
available, it can now show you the release notes. SpamSieve now
downloads the new version itself, rather than relying on your
browser. On 10.3 and later, the Download & Install button
will cause SpamSieve to auto-update itself to the latest
version.
- Improved accuracy on messages containing misspelled words.
- Now requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later.
- Auto-training now places a higher priority on corpus balance
compared to learning from novel messages.
- Improved the Apple Mail plug-in’s Train as Good script to
work around a bug in Mail.
- Improved the reliability of the Apple Mail training commands.
- Made further changes to improve the success rate of the Apple
Mail plug-in installer.
- Updated to PCRE 6.7.
- Entourage training progress messages no longer block if
Entourage is in the background.
- Worked around OS bug that prevented the Statistics sheet
from properly parsing dates when the user’s date format
started with a two-digit year.
- No longer quits with an internal error if the mydefaults
tool can’t be installed.
- Added keyboard shortcut for Hide Others.
- Fixed bug with Purchase window sheet.
- Removed some old, unused code.
- Updated the toolbar icons.
- Various localization and documentation improvements.
- Fixed bug with display of remaining demo time.
- The Entourage script installer is more robust when contacting
Entourage via AppleScript fails.
- Improved compatibility with Leopard.
- The date in the Statistics window more closely matches the
user’s preferences (10.4 and later).
- Better at detecting damaged corpus files (instead of crashing).
- Fixed bug where Uncertain Spam growls were always sent, even if
disabled in SpamSieve’s preferences.
- Adjusted workaround for Help Viewer bug.
- Increased the maximum width of the Hits column in rule list
windows.
- Added thousands separators throughout the Statistics, Corpus,
and rules windows.
- Fixed bug where adding a rule didn’t create a new rule if there
was already a rule with a blank “Text to Match.”
- Fixed rare crashing bug when performing operations during
idle time.
- Removed the Import Messages command (which let you train
SpamSieve directly from a file in mbox format), because there
are now very few situations where it is useful, and it was
confusing people.
- Added screenshot showing where to find Entourage scripts.
- 2.4.4—July 13, 2006
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s accuracy,
particularly when processing blank messages, HTML messages, and
messages containing images.
- The following strings may now be used in rules to match headers
that are missing: <SpamSieve-Unknown-Subject>,
<SpamSieve-Unknown-From>, <SpamSieve-Unknown-FromName>,
<SpamSieve-Unknown-To>. It is somewhat common for messages
to have a blank subject (which can be matched using the empty
string), but legitimate messages that omit the Subject for From
header are rare, and now these can easily be matched by creating
the appropriate rules on the blocklist.
- Quit when mail client quits is now enabled by default.
- Log entries are now abbreviated when the string that matched the
rule is long.
- The Apple Mail Train as Good command can now move messages
out of submailboxes of the Junk mailbox.
- The Apple Mail plug-in installer works better when the folder
permissions are messed up.
- Can now auto-recover from damaged message store files, rather
than complaining to the user about them.
- If SpamSieve is hidden when launched, it will refrain from
opening the Training Tip window.
- Improved the documentation, training tips, and localizations.
- Various code modernization and bullet-proofing throughout.
- Fixed localization bugs that could cause crashes.
- Fixed crash when hiding the progress panel.
- Fixed crash when saving false negatives to disk.
- Made changes to the Entourage scripts to try to work around an
OS bug that causes them to grow and eventually become corrupted.
- Worked around OS bug to prevent freezes when attempting to play
damaged sound files.
- 2.4.3—March 30, 2006
- Improved SpamSieve’s accuracy by counteracting various spammer
tricks.
- Removed the delay, when using Apple Mail on Tiger, between
choosing “Train as Good” or “Train as Spam” and when training
actually started.
- The Entourage scripts now report progress part way through bulk
trainings and allow you to cancel. They also warn if it looks
like you’re training SpamSieve with too many messages, and
they’re better at preventing duplicate categories from being
created in Entourage. The “Train Spam” script now removes the
spam messages from the server.
- Growl notifications from people in the address book now
include the “To” address for mailing list messages. This makes
it easier to decide whether to ignore the notification.
- Fixed bug that caused part of SpamSieve’s corpus to be written
to disk incorrectly when running on Intel. In most cases, no ill
effects would have been observed, and SpamSieve will repair the
corpus file the first time you launch 2.4.3.
- Improved the error messages.
- Improved the display of the demo time remaining.
- Updated the localizations.
- 2.4.2—February 23, 2006
- SpamSieve is now much better at catching a new type of spam
message that previous versions had been inconsistent at
catching.
- Worked around some more spammer tricks to improve accuracy.
- Improved the way message attachments are analyzed.
- Fixed bug that could cause improper analysis of messages from
Apple Mail or Eudora, leading to reduced accuracy.
- Improved phish detection.
- Improved the performance of the Apple Mail training commands on
Tiger and Jaguar.
- Made some changes to the way spam messages are colored in Apple
Mail. Now, the most spammy color (blue) is reserved for messages
with scores 99 or higher, i.e. messages that matched a blocklist
rule, had encoded HTML parts, or were known to definitely be
spam.
- The Show Window command in Apple Mail can now open the
SpamSieve help.
- Under certain circumstances, SpamSieve can now detect at launch
whether the application package is damaged, rather than
too-quietly reporting errors in the log during message
processing.
- Improved the troubleshooting documentation.
- Updated the Japanese localization.
- 2.4.1—January 25, 2006
- SpamSieve is now a universal binary.
- Made various changes to SpamSieve’s tokenizer and HTML parser to
improve accuracy.
- Improved filtering of messages containing attachments.
- Added Apple Mail settings to control whether messages trained as
spam are marked as read and/or left on the server.
- Better at finding notification sounds that are built into mail
clients.
- Now shows uncertain growls when notification is suppressed.
- SpamSieve now delegates more file reveal operations to Path
Finder 4, since it fixes a bug in Path Finder 3 that prevented
certain reveals from working.
- Rather than typing (or copying and pasting) your name and serial
number to personalize SpamSieve, you can now click the
x-spamsieve:// URL that’s sent to you when you purchase SpamSieve or get a serial
number reminder.
- Fixed bug where the rules list would scroll one rule up if it
was scrolled to the bottom and you edited a rule.
- Added Spanish localization and updated the Danish, Italian,
Swedish, and Vietnamese localizations.
- Improved the installation and troubleshooting documentation.
- Removed spurious Section 4.4.1 of the manual.
- 2.4—November 16, 2005
- Made various changes to the Bayesian engine to improve accuracy.
- Added some heuristics for detecting phishes.
- Apple Mail messages can now be filed into different mailboxes
based on how spammy they are (requires 10.3 or 10.4).
- The Apple Mail plug-in is now a Universal Binary, so SpamSieve
can be used on Intel-based Macs without running Mail in Rosetta.
- Added support for the new (non-haiku) Habeas headers.
- SpamSieve now plays notification sounds using the alert volume
rather than the master volume, and they’ll be played on the same
output device as alerts and sound effects. (The old behavior is
still in effect when playing classic sound files and when running on
Jaguar.)
- Added suppressing notification AppleScript parameter. You
can use this to prevent SpamSieve from bouncing its Dock icon or
showing Growls when recalculating the spam scores of old
messages.
- The Software Update alert is now a sheet, so it won’t interfere
with spam filtering.
- If Path Finder is running, it will be used instead of the Finder
to reveal files/folders.
- Made various tweaks to keep PowerMates from flashing when they
shouldn’t.
- Adjusted the standard set of rules.
- You can now tab back and forth between the search field and
table in the corpus and rules windows (requires 10.4).
- Predicted entries in the log now show the message’s sender.
- Added preference to control whether Apple Mail false positives
are marked as unread.
- Added Technical Support & Feedback item to the Help menu.
- The Entourage scripts try even harder to avoid creating
duplicate categories.
- SpamSieve now avoids loading the address book except when
absolutely necessary. Thus, if your address book is corrupted
such that loading it would cause a crash, you’ll still be able
to receive mail if you turn off SpamSieve’s address book–related
features.
- Messages with empty senders are no longer considered to be from
people in the address book, even if the address book contains a
contact with such an address.
- Fixed longstanding bug in which sorting the blocklist or whitelist
by Header or Match Style would group the rules
appropriately, but wouldn’t order the groups alphabetically by the
localized text in the column.
- Improved the error messages in the application and in the Apple
Mail plug-in.
- Made a change to prevent Apple Mail from deadlocking (in rare
circumstances) when training SpamSieve on Mac OS X 10.4.3.
- Fixed regression where Trained: (Auto) log entries occurred
before the corresponding Predicted ones.
- The Apple Mail training commands now respect the preference for
whether to color messages.
- Added hidden preference LogSpam that you can turn on with
defaults write com.c-command.SpamSieve LogSpam YES to make
SpamSieve keep a maildir-style folder of the spam messages it’s
seen. Right now, this is not recommended for general use on
slower machines.
- Updated link to Habeas Safelist.
- Updated eSellerate, PCRE, and SQLite libraries.
- Added Danish localization and improved the other localizations.
- Various documentation improvements, including:
- 2.3.2—August 8, 2005
- Made various improvements to increase SpamSieve’s accuracy.
- Added Quit when mail client quits option.
- Sped up filtering when Growl notifications are enabled. Improved
the text/layout of the Growl notifications.
- Re-installing or updating Eudora could have the effect of
re-enabling Eudora’s built-in junk plug-ins. This could reduce the
filtering accuracy and cause unexpected behavior as multiple
plug-ins acted on the same messages. Now, if SpamSieve detects that
its Eudora plug-in is installed, it will automatically disable any
other Eudora junk plug-ins.
- When you reset the corpus, SpamSieve automatically creates a dated
backup so that it’s possible to revert, if need be.
- The pop-up menu for selecting the uncertainty threshold now supports
scores as high as 98. This makes it possible to designate all
non-blocklisted spam messages as uncertain.
- The S and G indicators are now only shown in the Dock icon after
manual training, not auto-training.
- The log is now UTF-8 rather than ASCII, so it should be much
more readable for people using localized versions of SpamSieve.
- More errors are now logged.
- Better at finding sound files that are built into Mailsmith.
- Worked around Tiger bug that would cause archived log files to not
decompress automatically when opened.
- Fixed regression where SpamSieve could crash if you tried to
install the Entourage scripts when Entourage was not installed.
- Fixed bug in Apple Mail’s Train as Good, where it didn’t
always move messages out of the Spam mailbox if there were
lots of recipients.
- Fixed Entourage Train Good script to not make a new
Uncertain Junk category when one already exists (but
Entourage says that it doesn’t).
- Worked around AppleScript error that could occur when running
Entourage scripts.
- The regex code is more bulletproof in the face of rare OS errors.
- Added better heuristic for determining which files SpamSieve can
import addresses from. This should prevent some rare crashes.
- Updated the Habeas link in the Preferences window.
- The history database is more robust on Tiger.
- The Purchase window now makes it more clear when the serial
number has been successfully entered. Merged the Web
Purchase… and Instant Purchase… buttons.
- Adjusted the way the remaining demo time is displayed, as it led
many people to believe that they had less than a month of total
trial time.
- Improved training tips and the manual.
- Added French translation of manual. Updated Vietnamese
manual. Fixed regression where the Italian and Vietnamese
manuals were inaccessible.
- 2.3.1—May 16, 2005
- Works with Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.4.1. SpamSieve should
automatically install a new copy of its Apple Mail plug-in the
first time it’s launched, but if it doesn’t you can do so by
choosing Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve
menu.
- Various accuracy improvements.
- Renamed the Apple Mail training commands to Train as Good
and Train as Spam.
- Train as Spam is much faster in Apple Mail on 10.4 when
there are multiple messages selected.
- If SpamSieve’s Dock icon is hidden, a new SpamSieve - Open
Window command will appear in Apple Mail’s Message menu.
This lets you quit SpamSieve or access its windows and settings
while its menu bar is hidden.
- Worked around Apple Mail bug so that Train as Good now moves
spam messages out of Mail’s Spam folder on 10.4, provided
that SpamSieve had put them there.
- Reduced the maximum size of the Growl notification bubbles.
- Better at parsing malformed messages.
- The HTML parser is much faster with certain pathological spam
messages that could previously drag parsing out for a minute or
more.
- Worked around Entourage bug that could lead to the creation of
multiple Uncertain Junk categories.
- SpamSieve no longer complains about the permissions on Apple
Mail’s Bundles folder if you’re using a different mail
program.
- Removed the Prune Corpus command. With auto-training being
much smarter than in earlier versions, it’s almost never
advisable to prune, and improper pruning severely reduces
accuracy.
- The demo reminder window updates the number of days remaining if
you leave SpamSieve running for days or weeks at a time.
- Fixed bug that could cause a crash when using Instant
Purchase.
- Worked around crash caused by bug in 10.2.
- Updated localizations.
- 2.3—April 25, 2005
- General
- Works with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
- Made lots of improvements to SpamSieve’s parsers and
tokenizer for better accuracy. To fully take advantage of
this, you will need to reset SpamSieve’s corpus and re-train
it (e.g. with 300 recent good messages and 600 recent
spams). However, this is certainly not required, and I
expect that most people will opt for the simpler upgrade of
just installing the new SpamSieve application.
- Auto-training works better. SpamSieve is smarter about
selecting which incoming messages to train itself with, so
that it reaches a high level of accuracy sooner, and it is
better at adapting to new types of mail that you receive.
- Improved the training tips and the training section of
the manual so that it’s clearer what the best practices are.
- When training the whitelist, SpamSieve will now create rules
that match the addresses of the other recipients. This
should reduce false positives from people who haven’t
previously sent you mail, but who correspond with the same
people you do.
- Added Update Address Book “Me” Card command.
- Scriptability
- Added selection AppleScript property, which can be used
to get the selected token infos in the corpus or the
selected rules in the whitelist or blocklist window. One use
of this is demonstrated in a script that adds the
addresses of the selected whitelist rules to the Address
Book.
- Added AppleScript properties and commands to access
SpamSieve’s windows and log. One use of this is demonstrated
in a script that lets you open SpamSieve’s windows if
its Dock icon is hidden (and thus the menu bar is
inaccessible).
- Notification
- Added option to control whether Growl notifications contain
excerpts of the message body.
- The new message count in SpamSieve’s Dock icon is now
auto-positioned.
- Fixed regression where dragging the slider to adjust the
size of the number in the Dock icon didn’t temporarily show
the number so that you could preview the results.
- Apple Mail Integration
- Improved accuracy due to better decoding of Apple Mail
messages.
- The commands for training SpamSieve from Apple Mail are now
in Mail’s Message menu, rather than in the Scripts
menu. This lets you access those commands in the same way on
10.2 through 10.4, and you don’t have to worry about
changing the scripts around if you boot into a different
version of the OS.
- The Apple Mail plug-in is faster at processing messages.
- If the Apple Mail plug-in is installed but disabled for some
reason (e.g. a location switch or OS re-install), SpamSieve
will automatically re-enable it (takes effect when you
relaunch Mail).
- Worked around bug in Mail that could prevent Train Good or
Train Spam from working properly when training multiple
messages at once that were already in their final
destination.
- Eudora Integration
- The installer no longer asks you to find Eudora except when
absolutely necessary.
- The Eudora plug-in is now installed in the Application
Support folder rather than inside the Eudora application
package. Thus, it’s no longer necessary to re-install the
plug-in when updating Eudora, although you still may need to
disable the SpamWatch and SpamHeaders plug-ins if updating
Eudora re-enables them.
- Added a Cancel button to the alert that you get if
Eudora is already running when you ask SpamSieve to install
the Eudora plug-in, in case you don’t want to quit Eudora at
that time.
- Fixes and Tweaks
- The Apple Help is now multiple linked pages, rather than a
single page, so you can now use Help Viewer’s search box.
- Simplified the setup instructions in the manual, and added
new sections on customization.
- Improved duplicate message detection.
- Fixed bug where e-mail addresses were not always correctly
parsed out of mail headers.
- Tweaked the format of Trained entries in the log.
- Worked around OS bug that could cause SpamSieve to freeze
when installing AppleScripts.
- SpamSieve is better at following aliases and more tolerant
of incorrect permissions when looking for its support files.
- Updated to eSellerate Engine 3.6.1.
- Improved serial number name entry.
- Various localization fixes.
- The ? buttons in the Preferences window now open the
specific help sections on Jaguar.
- Fixed longstanding unreported bug where you could launch
multiple instances of SpamSieve if you were using Jaguar.
- 2.2.4—February 10, 2005
- Increased the speed of SpamSieve’s message processing.
- Processing messages with Entourage is much faster. To realize the
speed increase, re-install SpamSieve’s Entourage scripts and let it
replace the existing ones.
- Improved accuracy through better HTML and header processing. (It
is not necessary to reset the corpus.)
- Colors to indicate spamminess in Apple Mail are now enabled by
default.
- Can now play sounds (and bounce the Dock icon) when mail arrives, even
if SpamSieve or a mail program is frontmost.
- Added option to Entourage’s Change Settings to make all spam
messages marked with category Junk instead of marking some of
them with Uncertain Junk.
- Added more standard blocklist rules for non-Latin character sets.
- AppleScript errors complaining about not being able to find the
SpamSieve application should be much less common now. If you do see
such an error, asking SpamSieve to re-install the scripts for Apple
Mail or Entourage (and letting it replace the existing scripts)
should cure things.
- Improved name and serial number entry.
- The Edit Log command is no longer an alternate menu item.
- Can now load Entourage addresses when Launch Services can’t find
Entourage.
- The default classifier reports better scores.
- The behavior of the default classifier (if no rules or other
classifiers match, and the Bayesian classifier is disabled) may now
be changed by setting the DefaultIsGood default. Normally this
is YES, but you can set it to NO to make SpamSieve treat all
non-whitelisted messages as spam.
- Pruning now is recorded in the log.
- Updated the Russian localization.
- Added Swedish and Vietnamese localizations.
- Expanded and improved the manual.
- The Entourage scripts no longer mark messages with multiple copies
of the same category.
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve would sometimes incorrectly think that
it had made a mistake (if auto-training was on and the user had
asked it to reclassify a message).
- Fixed bug in the Change Settings scripts.
- No longer reports an error when trying to reset an empty initial
corpus.
- Fixed crash when quitting after resetting an empty corpus.
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve would crash when reading a damaged corpus
file.
- Worked around OS bug that could cause crashes when creating the
Uncertain Junk category in Entourage.
- Notification dismissal now works on Tiger.
- Apple Mail’s scripts are now installed in the correct location when
running on Tiger.
- 2.2.3—November 15, 2004
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve would complain of a permissions error
at startup.
- 2.2.2—November 14, 2004
- Can notify with Growl when good messages arrive, and to help
spot false positives without looking through the entire contents
of the spam folder.
- Added Change Settings commands for Apple Mail and Entourage,
which let you configure script options (spam folder name,
behavior when using Train Good and Train Spam, etc.)
without having to edit the scripts. The settings are stored in
SpamSieve’s preferences file, so they will persist if you update
or re-install the scripts.
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve would report a syntax error when
processing certain messages (typically in non-ASCII character
sets).
- Better accuracy due to improved header and body analysis.
- Better accuracy due to smarter auto-creation of From (name)
rules.
- Auto-training now takes scores into account; the corpus is
updated using messages that were harder to classify, to
forestall errors.
- Better handling of spam messages that lie about their encoding.
- Entourage now uses two separate categories for spam messages, so
that you can see which ones are more (or less) spammy.
- Improved accuracy when processing messages in German.
- Any Address rules now match SendTo addresses.
- Better handling of messages with “From ” lines.
- Worked around Mail performance problem where Add Good would
hang if there were a lot of recipients.
- The Dock (and DragThing) good message counter no longer
increases for messages received while the mail program is active.
- Added Russian localization.
- Improved the French localization.
- Better recovery from damaged Rules and History.db files.
- Added Italian-localized installation instructions.
- Improved launch time.
- Better parsing of PGP messages.
- Worked around 10.2 bug that could cause crashes when the
Training Tip window was updated.
- Fixed bad interaction between auto-training and duplicates when
the corpus was small.
- More tolerant of incorrect file and folder permissions.
- If Launch Services cannot find the Eudora application, the
installer will now try some heuristics and prompt the user to
locate Eudora, rather than giving up.
- The Apple Mail and Eudora plug-ins are better at finding and
launching the SpamSieve application, and they will notify the
user if they are unable to do this.
- Updated to eSellerate 3.5.9, which provides support for
registration names using non-ASCII characters.
- When you type in your serial number, SpamSieve normalizes its
spacing and case.
- The Add Good and Add Spam AppleScripts have been renamed
Train Good and Train Spam. When installing the new
scripts, SpamSieve will automatically move the old ones to the
trash.
- The Entourage spam folder is now called Junk E-mail instead
of Spam, since Entourage 2004 already has a so-named folder.
- 2.2.1—September 20, 2004
- Shows count of new good messages in DragThing 5.3 and later, if
you install an integration script. (This script will be built
into future versions of DragThing.)
- Fixed accuracy regressions from 2.1.4 and made some accuracy
improvements.
- Added Italian localization.
- Auto-training will no longer add duplicate messages to the
corpus, because they interfere with undo.
- You can now start a new paragraph in the crash reporter by
pressing Return rather than Command-Return.
- Tries to add itself to the Launch Services database at launch,
to make it easier for the scripts and plug-ins to find the
SpamSieve application.
- Fixed bug where the help buttons in the Preferences window
didn’t work unless the main help had previously been opened.
- Improved the French and Japanese localizations.
- The Edit Log command will now open the log using an editor,
rather than Console, if BBEdit is unavailable.
- Improved accuracy statistics when using Apple Mail IMAP
accounts.
- The mailbox parser is faster and more tolerant of malformed mbox
files.
- No longer tries to roll over the log more than once per day.
- Fixed regression where adding to the whitelist or blocklist
didn’t work if a disabled rule matched the message.
- Fixed crash that could happen when showing progress bar at
launch.
- Fixed crash when scanning System 7–format sounds.
- Fixed bug where slightly spammy Apple Mail messages would be
colored and recorded as spam, but not moved to the Spam mailbox.
- 2.2—August 24, 2004
- Accuracy Improvements
- SpamSieve is smarter about what text to tokenize, it
extracts more information from messages, it’s better at
detecting invisible text, and it can undo more spammer
obfuscations.
- The Bayesian classifier can leverage the results of
SpamAssassin’s heuristic tests. It also assigns better word
probabilities and is better at deciding which parts of the
message are important.
- Messages containing Habeas headers are now checked against the
Habeas Whitelist. This protects against spam messages that
include Habeas headers in order to get through filters.
- Removed the Import Seed Spam command, as it would
reduce accuracy with recent versions of SpamSieve.
- General Improvements
- Auto-training is more automatic. There is now a single checkbox
to enable auto-training and, if it’s on, SpamSieve will try to
do the right thing when it processes new messages. That is, it
will train itself using messages of the types that it needs to
see more of, and it will prevent the corpus from growing
unbalanced or overly large. Also, it will update the whitelist
using every incoming good message, so that you can have a
complete whitelist without bloating the corpus.
- The rules and corpus windows now have toolbars, and they support
iTunes-style filter-searching.
- The corpus and rules are now scriptable, and SpamSieve now
supports AppleScript Kit terminology.
- Assorted performance enhancements make SpamSieve faster and
improve the responsiveness of its user interface.
- Added Portuguese localization.
- Blocklist and Whitelist
- Rules support more match fields: From (name), Any
Recipient, Any Address, Any Character Set, and
Any Attachment Name.
- The new Import Addresses… command lets you import
blocklist and whitelist rules from text files (e.g. address
book exports or mbox files).
- Added default blocklist rules for .pif and .scr
attachments and a default whitelist rule for
lists.c-command.com.
- Rules can now match the empty string, e.g. when there is a
subject header, but the subject is blank. They can also
match absent headers by matching against, e.g.
<SpamSieve-Unknown-Subject>.
- The Text to Match field now abbreviates using an
ellipsis if the text won’t all fit.
- Notification
- Can make a Griffin PowerMate flash when new good messages
arrive.
- Now supports System 7–format notification sounds as well as
Entourage sound sets. In addition to the
Library/Sounds folders, SpamSieve will now look for
sounds installed with Apple Mail, Entourage, Mailsmith, and
PowerMail.
- Doesn’t play the notification sound if you are using fast
user switching and SpamSieve is running in one of the
background sessions.
- Notifications that require dismissal (continuous bouncing,
PowerMate flashing) are no longer triggered when SpamSieve
or the mail program is already frontmost. Thus, you don’t
have to deactivate the mail program and then activate it
again to dismiss the notification.
- Apple Mail Integration
- Sets the colors of spam messages to reflect how spammy they
are, making it easier to skim the Spam mailbox for false
positives.
- Protects against Web bugs by telling Mail not to load the
images from messages that are classified as spam.
- The Add Good script is better at moving messages from
the Spam folder back to the correct inbox, and it will
mark them as unread when it does so.
- The Add Good and Add Spam now work with Mac OS X 10.3.5.
- The plug-in will look for SpamSieve in the Applications
folder, even if Launch Services is confused and says it
can’t find it.
- Entourage Integration
- The Exclude my addresses switch now also applies to the
Entourage address book, to reduce the chances of a forged
spam getting through.
- Added new scripting verb add entourage addresses. This
will allow you to keep the Entourage addresses in sync
by using an Entourage shutdown schedule.
- Can automatically add the recipients of the messages you
send to the whitelist.
- Sanity-checks addresses that are loaded from Entourage.
For instance, if both the name and the address were entered
in Entourage’s address field, SpamSieve will now extract
just the address, rather than taking Entourage’s word for
it.
- The Add Good script now works with the
Possible Spam folder and marks false positives as
unread.
- Messages can have more than one category, so SpamSieve now
adds and removes the Junk category from the message,
rather than replacing the category. This means that
marking a message as junk doesn’t wipe out other categories
on the message.
- Shows a progress bar while importing Entourage addresses.
- Eudora Integration
- Removed the option to use the full Eudora junk score range;
this setting is now always in effect.
- Mailsmith Integration
- PowerMail Integration
- Statistics and Log
- The Statistics window shows the number of blocklist and
whitelist rules and the number of spam messages received per
day. The date sheet has a Now button that enters the
current date and time.
- The log is now stored in ~/Library/Logs/SpamSieve. The
Open Log command now opens the log in Console, so that
it’s easier to monitor as it changes. To get the old
behavior of opening the log in a text editor, hold down
Option and choose Edit Log.
- If the log file grows larger than 5 MB, SpamSieve compresses
it, archives it by date, and starts a new log.
- When SpamSieve makes a mistake, the log records which
classifier made the error and what the message’s score was.
The log also now records parse errors and the number of
messages in the corpus.
- Fixes and Tweaks
- SpamSieve can optionally show an alternate, more
photo-realistic, icon in the Dock.
- There is a new mailing list for discussion of SpamSieve.
- Each tab of the Preferences window now contains a help
button that will open the corresponding section of the Apple
help.
- Updated to PCRE 4.5 and SQLite 2.8.15.
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve could crash when generating a
message’s identifier if a system routine failed.
- Fixed bug in EDMessage that could cause crashes when
decoding certain quoted-printable messages.
- Better handling of 8-bit subjects with no specified
encoding.
- Worked around Panther bug that could cause crashes or
drawing artifacts on the desktop by no longer trying to draw
on the Dock icon when it’s hidden.
- Worked around OS bug that prevented certain notification
sounds from playing.
- Fixed bug where the selection was not always preserved when
editing blocklist and whitelist rules.
- The Show Corpus, Show Statistics, and
Preferences… commands in the Dock menu now bring
SpamSieve to the front.
- The progress window when exporting the corpus sometimes
lagged a bit before closing automatically.
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve would get confused if you entered
the empty string as a date.
- 2.1.4—April 15, 2004
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve could crash when installing the Eudora
plug-in if you were using Eudora 6.0.x.
- Fixed regression where SpamSieve couldn’t process certain
messages, resulting in a script error and reduced accuracy.
- Added French localization.
- Updated AOL instructions, since AOL now supports IMAP.
- 2.1.3—April 13, 2004
- Added menu commands for installing the Apple Mail plug-in and
scripts, the Eudora plug-in, and the Entourage scripts. These
items are now stored inside the SpamSieve application package.
- Scripts for the other applications are now stored inside the
application bundle, not at the root of the disk image. The
Show Other Scripts menu command will reveal them in the
Finder.
- Apple Mail and Eudora users should update their plug-ins, using
the commands in the SpamSieve menu.
- Added the score script command, which returns an integer
between 0 and 100 indicating how spammy the message is. 50 and
higher mean spam.
- The Predicted lines in SpamSieve’s log now show the scores
of the messages.
- Can now use Eudora’s full 0-to-100 junk score range if you check
the appropriate box in the Advanced preferences.
- Improved parsing of messages with 8-bit transfer data.
- Faster at processing messages.
- Added support for Outlook Express 5.
- Worked around OS bug that could cause SpamSieve to come to the
front each time a message was processed in Apple Mail or Eudora
(usually if an X11 application was frontmost).
- Fixed bug where errors encountered while processing messages
were not reported in the log.
- Worked around Cocoa problem where certain notification sounds
wouldn’t play.
- Made the Purchase window easier to understand, and added a
button for looking up lost serial numbers.
- Trims the text in the serial number field so people don’t
accidentally paste the number in twice.
- Software updater is better at checking whether the computer can
connect to the Internet.
- SpamSieve now tries to parse Eudora messages according to
RFC822, even though this will sometimes fail, as many Eudora
messages are not RFC822-compliant.
- Adjusted the list of headers that SpamSieve ignores.
- Added keyboard shortcuts for Apple Mail scripts.
- Improved the training tips.
- Updated to SQLite 2.8.13.
- Updated to eSellerate SDK 3.5.5.
- The Send Report button in the crash reporter is no longer a
default button, so there’s no longer confusion about entering
returns in the comment field.
- No longer prints fragments of spam messages to the console when
it gets confused.
- Replaced the copy of the manual outside the app with a read-me.
- 2.1.2—January 26, 2004
- SpamSieve can now move Apple Mail POP messages to the Spam
folder. Thus, it now fully supports Apple Mail on Jaguar and
Panther.
- Honor Habeas headers is now off by default.
- Fixed regression where blocklist and whitelist rules got
deselected after editing their text.
- When loading addresses from Entourage, SpamSieve now picks up
addresses that are not associated with any contact (that is,
they appear only in a group).
- The default date shown in the Statistics window is now the
date that SpamSieve was first launched, rather than September
2002.
- The Apple Mail Add Good script is better at finding the
proper inbox when moving false positives out of the Spam
folder.
- The Apple Mail Mark If Spam script can mark the spam
messages as read.
- The Purchase window now makes it more clear when a serial
number has been accepted.
- In the Statistics window, Set… is now Set Date… and
Copy is now Copy Stats.
- Fixed crash that could happen when processing messages in
Japanese encodings.
- Added Japanese localization.
- 2.1.1—January 8, 2004
- Much faster at processing messages when there are many blocklist
and whitelist rules. Also improved the speed of loading,
deleting, and sorting rules.
- Improved accuracy tracking with the Panther version of Apple
Mail; previously, SpamSieve couldn’t always tell when it was
being corrected.
- Catches more spam because it knows about more spammer
obfuscation tricks and also which headers it should ignore.
- Fixed bug (introduced in 2.0) where the Bayesian engine didn’t
work if Mac OS X’s default language was set to Japanese.
- The SpamSieve Eudora Plug-In is better at launching the
SpamSieve application if it is not already running.
- Loading Entourage addresses now adds to the addresses that were
previously loaded, rather than replacing them. This makes it
possible for Entourage users who have more than one Entourage
identity to give SpamSieve the addresses from all their address
books (by loading once for each identity). Hold down Option when
clicking Load to get the old behavior of replacing the
previously loaded addresses.
- The sound pop-up menu in the Preferences window now
immediately notices when new sounds are installed; previously,
it would only check when updating the rest of the preferences
window.
- You can now add a rule without a the Blocklist or
Whitelist window being frontmost. SpamSieve will ask which
type of rule to add.
- Regex rules can now start with an options modifier such as
(?-i).
- Copying rules to the clipboard now just copies the text to match
(typically an e-mail address), not all the columns. To get all
the columns, you can print to PDF.
- The Entourage Add Good script now finds localized inboxes,
rather than creating a folder called Inbox.
- The Entourage Add Spam script can now remove spam messages
from the server.
- The Statistics window now shows percentages instead of
ratios.
- SpamSieve will now quit at launch if another copy of the
application is already running.
- Re-targeted broken Habeas URL.
- Added the following menu commands: Close All Windows,
Minimize All Windows, and Zoom.
- 2.1—December 9, 2003
- Added support for Apple Mail POP accounts. POP messages can be
marked as junk and colored, but (due to limitations in the
present version of Apple Mail) they cannot be moved to another
mailbox.
- Added a Training Tip window that gives advice on how to
improve SpamSieve’s accuracy, based on the current state of the
corpus and preferences.
- Rules in the whitelist and blocklist are no longer limited to
just matching sender addresses. They can now match a variety of
message fields (To, CC, Subject, etc.), as well as the message
body. In addition to exact matches, rules now support the
following match styles: contains, starts with, ends with (useful
for matching domains), and Perl-compatible regular expressions.
You can now edit rules and add new rules manually (as opposed to
automatically, as a result of training SpamSieve with a
message).
- When trained with a good message from a mailing list, SpamSieve
will automatically create a whitelist rule based on a mailing
list header, if present.
- SpamSieve can now read in the Entourage address book and use it
as a whitelist. Thus, the Entourage rule can now give SpamSieve
all the messages, not just the ones that were from unknown
senders. This means that SpamSieve can now accurately notify the
user when non-spam messages are received. Also, the statistics
it keeps will be more complete.
- Improved the accuracy of the Bayesian classifier when the corpus
is unbalanced.
- Made a variety of low-level changes to improve SpamSieve’s
accuracy, for instance: adjusted the list of headers that are
analyzed and how words are tokenized.
- The Apple Mail Add Spam script now has an option to control
whether the messages are moved to the Spam folder.
- The Entourage Add Good script now moves messages to the
inbox if they’re located in the Spam folder.
- Mailsmith users can now auto-train using only spam or good
messages by turning off training in Mailsmith and turning on one
of the auto-train checkboxes in SpamSieve.
- Improved the importing of mbox files that do not have blank
lines between the messages, such as some Eudora mailboxes. Fixed
a bug where the the mbox parser could crash if a message had
length zero. Also, SpamSieve now shows a progress bar while
counting the number of messages that will be imported.
- Improved the corpus and rule list displays. You can now enter
and leave editing mode by typing Return. Type-ahead works better;
for instance, if you type “g” and there are no rows that start
with “g,” it will look for one that starts with “f.” When you
delete a word or rule, you can cancel out of the confirmation
sheet by typing Escape. To avoid the confirmation sheet
entirely, you can delete using Command-Delete instead of Delete.
When a word or rule is deleted, SpamSieve selects a nearby rule
so that you don’t lose your place. When deleting many words at
once, SpamSieve no longer shows a progress window for deletions
that will not take very long.
- Entering the name and serial number to personalize SpamSieve is
now more foolproof: SpamSieve strips leading and trailing
whitespace, and it detects when you enter a coupon code in the
serial number field. Fixed regression where SpamSieve rejected
names containing non-ASCII characters. In addition, there’s a
new button for quickly redeeming coupons.
- Updated to the latest eSellerate SDK so that purchasing
SpamSieve from within the application is faster.
- SpamSieve now requires Mac OS X 10.2.6 or later.
- Fixed bug where dates entered in the Statistics window were
sometimes parsed in GMT instead of the local time zone, thus
causing the date to be off by a few hours.
- Improved the reliability and user interface of the crash
reporter.
- No longer crashes when parsing certain non-RFC822-compliant
Eudora messages.
- 2.0.2—October 1, 2003
- Now works with Apple Mail (IMAP and .Mac only, not POP).
- The message count in the Dock icon now resets when an e-mail
client becomes active (rather than just when SpamSieve became
active). You can also control the size and position of the
number in the Dock icon.
- Much faster at deleting lots of rules at once.
- Replaced the message store database with custom code that’s
faster and more reliable.
- Improved accuracy for HTML messages containing links.
- Importing mbox files is faster.
- Fixed bug where you couldn’t use Web registration after the demo
period had expired.
- The log records which addresses matched the whitelist or
blocklist.
- The log records corpus imports.
- Auto-training is faster.
- The Entourage Add Spam script can close the frontmost window if
it’s spam.
- Fixed bug where the date in the Statistics window could get
cut off if you changed it to use a more verbose format.
- Worked around OS bug that caused dates like “01.09.2003” to be
interpreted as January 9 in German-style locales.
- Added Copy button to the Statistics window.
- Fixed problem updating certain history databases from 1.3.1.
- More resilient to minor corpus file corruption.
- Fixed crash that could happen with improperly formed multi-part
messages.
- Shows the number of blocklist or whitelist rules in the title
bar.
- The whitelist now contains some c-command.com addresses by
default.
- Fixed crash when opening the Statistics window while adding
messages.
- The Statistics window shows ratios, where applicable.
- Assorted minor performance improvements.
- The modification dates of the AppleScripts are now the actual
modification dates, not the date the distribution was built.
- 2.0.1—September 17, 2003
- Replaced the database engine that was being used to store the
corpus with some custom code. This should be much faster and
more reliable.
- Loading and saving the rules is faster, due to a better file
format.
- The rules and corpus message counts are now saved to disk during
idle time rather than when quitting. This should prevent data
loss in the event that SpamSieve doesn’t quit normally.
- The whitelist and blocklist are more memory-efficient.
- Plugged memory leak in EDMessage.
- Fixed crash involving certain really long header lines.
- Fixed bug where the Whitelist and Blocklist windows
weren’t always up to date.
- Table views are smarter about not scrolling unnecessarily to
maintain their selections.
- The Whitelist and Blocklist windows now secondary sort
by sender.
- Changes to the preferences are saved to disk immediately.
- Fixed bug where tables saved their sorted columns but didn’t
restore them.
- When SpamSieve gets a fatal error, it now quits like it says it
will.
- 2.0—September 10, 2003
- SpamSieve now extracts a lot more information from each
message. This makes it much more accurate and also makes it
learn faster.
- Now integrates with Eudora 6 (Sponsored or Paid) via a plug-in.
It can now process every incoming Eudora message and can be
trained using the Junk and Not Junk commands in Eudora’s
Message menu.
- SpamSieve now has a blocklist and a whitelist. These are
automatically maintained based on the senders of messages that
SpamSieve is trained with. The blocklist makes sure that all
messages from known spammers are caught and speeds processing
for these messages. The whitelist lets you be sure that certain
messages will never be marked as spam; this was possible before,
but now you don’t have to clutter your address book with
addresses from online retailers, etc.
- You can now control how conservative or aggressive SpamSieve is
at catching spam.
- SpamSieve can now play a sound or bounce its Dock icon after a
batch of non-spam messages has arrived. This is meant to replace
your e-mail client’s new mail notification, which you don’t want
going off if all the new messages are spam.
- Shows the number of new good messages in the Dock icon.
- Now parses HTML so that it can better extract relevant
information from HTML messages, and also handle various
HTML-based tricks that spammers use to fool filters.
- New method of calculating word probabilities makes SpamSieve
better at discerning which words in the message are important.
- Includes a corpus of seed spam, to jump-start spam recognition
for users who do not have many saved spam messages.
- The corpus is now stored in databases rather than in a property
list. This makes it launch faster and use much less memory, as
the corpus doesn’t have to be all in RAM at the same time.
- The statistics file format (for History.db) has changed in order
to enable performance improvements and more statistical displays
in future versions.
- Handles more types of plain text obfuscations, and is much
faster at undoing them.
- Added option for the address book whitelist to only use other
people’s addresses, so that spam messages from your own address
don’t match the whitelist.
- Can mark all messages with Habeas headers as good.
- Can mark all messages with some variant of “ADV” at the start of
the subject as spam.
- Can mark all base64-encoded HTML messages as spam.
- New probability combiner increases accuracy.
- Uses stop words to speed processing and reduce false negatives.
- When filtering a message, considers the number of occurrences of
the words, not just which words are present.
- Can import messages from mbox files.
- Can import the corpus from and export it to an XML property list
(the same format used by 1.x).
- SpamSieve can now check for updated versions of itself.
- Added crash reporter.
- Added Dock menu containing frequently used commands.
- The entries in the log are more detailed.
- The corpus now stores the date at which each word was last
accessed.
- Fixed bug where storing statistics would fail on systems that
didn’t know about GMT.
- Fixed bug where SpamSieve could throw away long runs of HTML
thinking they were attachments.
- Added button for opening the Mac OS X Address Book from inside
SpamSieve.
- The Statistics window now has a contextual menu item for
copying the displayed information.
- SpamSieve no longer wastes cycles updating the Statistics
window after it’s been closed.
- The Statistics window is smarter about updating only the
portions that could have changed.
- No longer shows Good Words and Spam Words stats.
- Logging has less overhead.
- Updates the history asynchronously, resulting in faster message
processing.
- Checks for mistakes in a background thread.
- False negatives are now written to disk in a background thread.
- Re-arranged the Corpus window.
- Pruning the corpus now works by access date rather than by word
counts. Of course, you can manually prune the old way by sorting
the Corpus window by Total.
- Updated to SQLite 2.8.6 and tuned it for speed.
- Updated to PCRE 4.3.
- Updated to eSellerate 3.5, which should fix crashes some people
saw after registering on 10.2.6.
- Now looks at headers of subparts of messages from Mailsmith.
- Time-consuming operations now either have a progress bar or a
progress spinner.
- Better at extracting malformed e-mail addresses from headers.
- Copying rows from the Corpus window to the clipboard now
uses the order of the columns in the window rather than the
default column order.
- Fixed regression where the Entourage scripts no longer created
the Spam folder if it didn’t exist.
- Fixed potential crash with regex replacements at the end of a
string.
- The history and the corpus files can now be aliases.
- Automatically trims carriage returns and other illegal
characters when you paste in your name and serial number.
- Now saves the name and serial number to disk as soon as they’re
entered.
- The Spam folder in Entourage no longer has to be top-level.
- Entourage can mark good messages as unread.
- Type-selecting in table views is quicker.
- No longer nags constantly when unregistered.
- Fixed bug where it could look as though SpamSieve had hung if
it started up in the background with an empty corpus.
- 1.3.1—June 18, 2003
- Added direct integration with Mailsmith 2.0 and later. Enabling
SpamSieve is as easy as clicking a checkbox. You can train
SpamSieve directly from Mailsmith’s Message menu. Bare Bones
Software has seamlessly integrated it with Mailsmith’s powerful
filtering system, and Mailsmith knows not to bounce its Dock
icon after receiving a batch of messages that are all spam.
- Fixed crashing bug triggered by incorrectly encoded headers.
- Regex substitutions are faster and much more memory efficient.
- When adding spam messages to the corpus, the default is now for
SpamSieve to move them to the Spam folder.
- The PowerMail Move If Spam script now changes the color of
spam messages.
- The Emailer scripts now pass text and HTML attachments on to
SpamSieve for analysis.
- Added instructions for using the Entourage and PowerMail address
books as whitelists.
- Compacted the ED frameworks to reduce application size and
memory use.
- Disabled SQLite’s file locking so that SpamSieve’s data folder
can now be located on an AppleShare volume.
- Caches the Address Book to speed whitelist lookups 100 fold.
- The statistics database is faster due to an updated version of
SQLite.
- Fixed bad pointer in header extractor that caused unnecessary
fallbacks to the secondary parser (reducing accuracy).
- Added experimental support for moving Entourage messages on IMAP
accounts to the (local) Spam folder. This can be enabled by
editing the scripts with Script Editor.
- For clarity, the names of AppleScripts that ask SpamSieve to
predict the category of a message now contain the word “if.”
- Added lots of minor clarifications to the documentation.
- 1.3—February 11, 2003
- More resilient to spammers’ tricks for obfuscating words.
- Can use e-mail addresses in the system Address Book as a
whitelist. Messages sent from those addresses will never be
marked as spam.
- Greatly reduced overall memory usage as well as launch and quit
times.
- Can save false negatives to disk for later reporting to
SpamSieve’s developer.
- You can edit the spam and good counts associated with a word,
remove selected words from the corpus, and reset the corpus
entirely.
- Type-ahead navigation in the Corpus window. Type the first
few letters of a word or number to select it (and scroll to it).
- You can hide statistics from before a set date, to better see
the current accuracy and spam reception rate.
- Improvements to the Corpus window: Shows all words rather
than only those considered statistically significant. Re-sorting
by numeric columns is twice as fast. You can copy the selected
rows to the clipboard or drag them to another application. The
selection is preserved when you change the sort column, you can
sort in descending order, and the sorted column is remembered
between launches. The Home and End keys work.
- The Prune Corpus command now tells you how many words it
would remove and asks for confirmation.
- The statistics tracking is smarter about handling duplicate
messages.
- The statistics have tooltips explaining what they mean, and you
can copy all of the statistics to the clipboard at once.
- Improved accuracy tracking of PowerMail and Emailer messages.
- Eudora Integration: Can mark spam messages as read and/or mark
them for removal from the server.
- Expanded the AppleScript dictionary, to enable better
integration with mail and news clients.
- Entourage Integration: Creates Junk category if there isn’t one,
and can mark spam messages as read.
- Mailsmith Integration: The adding scripts now set the
appropriate message properties.
- Better parsing of messages with illegal characters in the
headers.
- SpamSieve’s Info.plist file contains an LSUIElement entry.
Change the 0 to a 1 to hide the application’s Dock icon.
(You’ll need to change it back to access the preferences.)
- The message count display has moved from the Corpus window
to the Statistics window.
- Better error message when the corpus couldn’t be saved.
- Added tooltips to preferences.
- The registration window gives better feedback when you
personalize.
- Better recovery from errors in the corpus file.
- The secondary parser is better at handling DOS linebreaks.
- 1.2.2—November 20, 2002
- Fixed bug in the PowerMail Add Good script.
- Added uninstaller for Eudora users.
- Better handling of errors while adding messages to the corpus.
- Removed bloat from the Entourage Mark Spam script.
- The application icon now has an alpha channel, so it doesn’t
appear with a white halo when viewed on a colored background.
- Minor changes to the manual.
- 1.2.1—November 18, 2002
- Modified Info.plist to work around a bug in Mac OS X 10.1 that
could cause the Finder to crash when launching SpamSieve.
- 1.2—November 18, 2002
- Added support for Emailer 2.0v3 and Eudora (5.2 and later).
- Decodes base64 and quoted-printable text parts, thus finding
words that spammers try to hide from anti-spam software.
- Decodes subjects that use different character sets (e.g. big5).
- Adds special tokens for MIME entities such as part boundaries
and uninterpretable message parts.
- Keeps track of the messages added to the corpus, and can
optionally prevent you from adding the same message more than
once (biasing the counts). Thus, you no longer have to remember
which messages you’ve already added.
- You can now “undo” adds to the corpus, e.g. if you added a
message as good when you meant to add it as spam.
- Can now add messages to the corpus as they are filtered, so
after the initial training you only have to add messages when
SpamSieve makes a mistake.
- When filtering a message, SpamSieve can optionally check whether
the message is in the corpus. If it is, SpamSieve looks up the
answer rather than trying to predict. One use of this feature is
that if SpamSieve makes a mistake, you can Add Spam and then
Label/Move If Spam and be sure that the message will be
labeled/moved.
- Keeps a log of additions to the corpus, filtering results, and
errors.
- Mailsmith: If SpamSieve thinks a message is spam, it sets the
deleted property of the message to true; otherwise it sets
the flagged property of the message to true. Therefore, if
SpamSieve has classified the message then exactly one of the
properties will be true, and if it hasn’t they’ll both be false.
(Normally, neither of these message properties is used by
Mailsmith itself.)
- Entourage and PowerMail: If you tell SpamSieve to move spam
messages to a spam folder and the spam folder doesn’t exist, the
script will create the spam folder for you.
- When you add spam messages to the corpus, can optionally move
them to a Spam folder.
- Added status indicators in the Dock icon (like Norton
DiskLight).
- The spam probability of unknown words is now 0.4 instead of 0.2.
- The Corpus window uses less memory and sorts much faster.
- Accuracy tracking is faster and uses less memory and disk space.
- Fixed bug where accuracy tracking didn’t work for some Mailsmith
messages with multiple parts.
- Improved the manual’s instructions for e-mail client
integration.
- Compiled with GCC 3 for greater speed.
- Uses the latest version of the eSellerate SDK, which eliminates
a crash at startup under certain circumstances.
- No longer shows the “Upgrading From 1.0” message when starting
with a blank corpus.
- 1.1—September 19, 2002
- E-Mail Client Integration
- Added support for PowerMail.
- Added instructions and an AppleScript for making Mailsmith
download and filter mail faster.
- Added an AppleScript for Entourage that moves spam into a
Junk folder.
- Performance
- Launches about 60% faster than 1.0.
- You can now prune the corpus to remove words that are taking
up memory without contributing to spam recognition. This can
also dramatically decrease SpamSieve’s launch time.
- Recalculating spam probabilities is about 10% faster and
uses less memory.
- Quitting is faster because SpamSieve now writes corpus
changes to disk during idle time.
- Saving the corpus is slightly faster.
- Displays statistics about the number of messages filtered,
SpamSieve’s accuracy, and the types of words in the corpus.
- SpamAssassin’s X-Spam-Status headers are now treated as single
words. This means that if SpamAssassin is running on your mail
server, SpamSieve will learn to respect (or ignore) its
judgment.
- Does a better job of ignoring e-mail attachments, thus reducing
corpus bloat.
- Installs the eSellerate Engine if it’s not present, thus
enabling “Instant Registration” for more users.
- Asking SpamSieve to categorize a message now forces an update of
all the word probabilities. Previously, the update only happened
during idle time.
- Highlights the sorted column in the Corpus window. The
columns themselves have shorter names. There’s a new “Total”
column. Auto-resizing of the columns works better. You can now
manually resize any column, and manual resizings and reorderings
are saved between launches.
- Shows fatal errors as alert panels rather than just printing
them on the console.
- The Corpus.plist data file is now sorted by word. This makes it
easier to examine the corpus manually, and to compare it to
other users’ corpora.
- 1.0—September 10, 2002
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