Thunderbird - Built in Spamassasin

Using Thunderbird, in conjunction with your IMAP configured dovecot is by far the best method of synchronizing you mail folder with multiple devices. In Thunderbird you should instantly turn on your junk mail “adaptive filters”. You can also set custom filter rules to send messages with particular words in the header to the junk folder. Frankly I prefer using the graphical configuration of Thunderbird to the direct command line configuration of spamassasin. Thunderbird is powerful, and successfully filters out well over 95% of the spam I receive. I get closer and closer every day to completely avoiding all spam. Every day I set a new filter rule, and mark new messages as spam.

iPhone IMAP Folder Re-Synchronize

If you have changed the folder names on your mail server, and they do not correspond to the names appearing on your iPhone you can simply do the following to synchronize them. Enter the email settings menu, select the email account that you have changed the folder names of, and deactivate the account. DO NOT DELETE THE ACCOUNT. Then simply re-activate the account. Your folder names will instantly synchronize when you enter the mail application.

iPhone Email Spam - Dealing with it Using IMAP

IMAP mail servers keep the files on the server, in addition to allowing external devices to access and download them. Basically IMAP allows you to synchronize your iPhone with your mail folder the same way you synchronize with your iTunes music. The beauty of this is that you can use a spam filtering program, such as Evolution or Mozilla Thunderbird to establish customized spam filtering rules. Overall, after about a days worth of tuning the spam filter rules, you can practically eliminate all mail spam that would typically go to your iPhone.

If you use Gmail, Yahoo mail, or another other mail system, you will first have to forward the emails to a mail server that supports IMAP. I believe Gmail offers IMAP, therefore you can probably set your spam filter rules directly in Gmail, and then synchronize your Iphone with your account. Yahoo I know does not currently support IMAP, therefore you will have to forward your email to an IMAP server, or settle with the SPAM filtering provided by the Yahoo interface. I find the Yahoo interface relatively limited, specifically compared to the elaborate parameters that can be set in Mozilla Thunderbird. Frankly I highly recommend just forwarding all mail to a local IMAP server, and have Thunderbird continuously running to filter out the crapola.

I am not going to get into setting up a mail server, as I have covered it extensively in the past. If your interested in setting up your own IMAP server feel welcome to search this blog in the upper right hand corner for more information. You do not need a domain name, as you can forward the email directly to your external IP address

Basically this concept only works with IMAP because POP will download the messages from the mail server, then clean the spam, and the mail will only be on the local machine in the Thunderbird directories. IMAP keeps the mail on the server, and Thunderbird will successfully clean out the BS leaving the mail accessible to other devices such as your iPhone.

Debian - Dovecot IMAP Installation

When installing dovecot on Debian you have to include the appropriate mail transport agent. For instance to install dovecot with imap support use:

sudo apt-get install dovecot-common dovecot-imapd

Then configure the /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf file:

sudo nano /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

Adjust the listen section by uncommenting the pound signs. Configure the listen address to be *:143. Use the 1’st mbox default mail location; search for the line using control “w” in nano. Contract the search term to “mbox” and you will most likely be moved to the appropriate location. Simply uncomment the pound sign and your dovecot should be ready to go after a restart:

sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot restart

Dovecot Inter-Config with Sendmail

The beauty of Dovecot is that you can have one single configuration line that automatically creates a mailbox, for each user on the computer. For instance, if you have an Apache VirtualHost setup for, lets say, bgevolution.com, and you want to receive mail You can create a virtusertable, which is a Sendmail configuration file in your /etc/mail directory, like so:

@bgevolution.com bgevolution

Then add the user:

sudo adduser bgevolution

Then you have to add the password for the user. You can do one of two things:

su bgevolution

passwd

Or:

sudo passwd bgevolution

By setting it up this way, all mail received by sendmail, will be directed to the, root folder, and mailbox, of the bgevolution user. Then you can configure Dovecot: add the following line to the top of your dovecot.conf file:

mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

This line will allow you to login to Dovecot, as the user bgevolution, to receive mail sent to the computer for the bgevolution.com domain. For Dovecot, the only other configuration that is require is the listen parameter; add the following to the top of your dovecot.conf file:

listen = *:143

This listen parameter will allow Dovecot to function on the standard IMAP port. Then you have to tell dovecot that you want it to behave as an IMAP server; add the following to the top of your dovecot.conf file:

protocols = imap

You can refer to my previous Dovecot post for more information :

http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/index.php/dovecot-ubuntu-server/