how much do you have to train it before it works on its own?

I installed this morning. Have been training it with every message that comes in. Probably close to 200 messages. How long before it operates automatically?

That’s not necessary. You should do an initial training with messages that you have on hand, and thereafter only train it with messages that are not classified correctly (i.e. spam messages that end up in the inbox or good messages that end up in the Spam mailbox).

It will operate automatically from the very beginning. If, after training it with the 200 messages, it doesn’t start catching some of the spam, then it isn’t setup properly.

The problem was that he was using an IMAP mail account but had created the SpamSieve rule as POP.

help! SpamSieve not filtering
I installed it Friday night and didn’t have my initial corpus percentage right. I was getting zero filtering. I just reset the corpus per the advice on this forum and retrained with 126 onhand messages that are exactly 35%good/65%spam. I don’t have more than 82 spam msgs on hand so that’s all I used. Do I now just wait and see?

one more question…
As I watch mail coming in and not being filtered, I correct SpamSieve. Do I have to keep the 65/35% balanced in the corpus as I correct? Ack! I’m not getting how to do this AND nothing is filtering.

No, the ratio is just for the initial training. After that, SpamSieve will manage it automatically. Just make sure that you correct all the mistakes.

Then probably something isn’t setup properly in your mail program. Please check for common setup problems or report some information about your setup that I could use to diagnose the problem.

sending you my log file

I am emailing my log file…maybe you’ll see something I don’t. Thanks

The problem was that the “If” part of the SpamSieve rule in Apple Mail said “Sender is in my Previous Recipients” instead of “Every Message.”