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LATEST NEWS

NEW UPDATE!
 Long time, no speak! I've been sidelined for a long time. Sorry it's been so long since I provided an update. I have been AWOL. Guilty as charged. I apologize for not updating the site and not responding to emails. I have a couple of excuses, I promise.

Number one, I got married in June and I just got back from my honeymoon. Wedding preparations stole a ton of my time (although honestly I probably did 10% of the total work compared to my wife, she was a machine). But don't worry, she fully supports the Spammunition project! :) She hates spam just as much as I do.

Number two, there was a surge in the workload at my day job and I haven't been able to do much of anything on the project.

Number three, I've been trying to find a way to open source this project. I realize that would be the best way to move forward with this. It just makes sense. Unfortunately there is currently a problem with this, since Spammunition contains a proprietary, commercial programming module. I'm currently talking to the author of the module to see if there is a way we can move forward towards an open source path. I can't open source this without his permission.

Hopefully it's successful and people can begin contributing to Spammunition. It needs a LOT of work. Perhaps even a start-from-scratch rebuild. There are lots of bugs to be fixed, new features to add, and frankly I'm a sucky programmer. The reason I started this in the first place is because of my hatred of spam, not my Win32 programming talent (or lack thereof).

Anyway bear with me and hopefully this project will move forward shortly. Again, apologies for my disappearing act.

3/26/03
If you have been experiencing errors with short emails, there is a fix for that. Specifically, if you've been getting "no duplicates" errors, then get the new version. You won't have that problem any more. FYI, this was only happening with users of Exchange. There's no need to use the fixed version unless you run Exchange and have been having this error.

I've replaced the broken version of 0.64 with the fixed version on the downloads page. You'll have to uninstall and re-install again.

3/22/03
Spammunition 0.64 Beta is finally out. Download it from this page.

To begin using this new version, you must make sure Outlook is not running, and uninstall your current version of Spammunition. Otherwise it won't work. You can uninstall from Add/Remove Programs in the Windows control panel. Or, if you are having problems with that, you can manually uninstall as well. Instructions for that are on the troubleshooting page.

Reports from early testers said overall that 0.64 is actually a little slower during the 'Analyze Words' phase. However, it uses an order of magnitude less memory. 0.64 also has new features, that are talked about in previous site updates below. Plus some bug fixes, and a much more robust error handling system.

Side note: I promise - the next version of Spammunition will allow you to delete your old spam. After you 'Analyze Words', you will be able to delete the spam email. So 'Analyze Words' will take much less time, because you don't have to keep re-analyzing the same spam over and over again.

A little more on the automatic bug-reporting in 0.64. Please, please use the automatic bug report feature. It will really help the program, stability-wise. Plus, I plan on listing workarounds or troubleshooting tips for specific errors. So there's a chance you'll learn how to fix the bug right away when you report it.

To the folks that helped me test 0.64 before the public release, thank you very much!

3/14/03
I distributed the new version to some testers, and unfortunately they've alerted me to some new bugs. I'm working on fixing those before I go public with this version. I guess this version will just be "done when it's done." :)

Also, I forsee that 0.64 will be the last version in which you'll need to keep around your old spam.

On a side note, I've been experimenting with Inno Setup, and it looks pretty solid. I imagine that 0.64 will be the last time that VISE Installer will be used. Thanks to those of you who brought Inno to my attention. Great freeware installer.

Also thanks again to you folks who've made donations. It is really appreciated!

3/10/03
New version, 0.64, is almost done. It's in final testing. Should be out by the end of the week.

On a side note, I have no idea what this page says, but it sure did drive a ton of traffic to the site last week! Digi.no, thanks for the link!

2/21/03
Some more info about the as yet unreleased new version - 0.64. A bit of scope creep has entered the picture... I'm adding new features that I didn't plan on for this version. Hence the delay in releasing it. Hopefully you'll find them useful.

  • "Analyze words" now has a dramatic enhancement in memory utilization. For sets of email over 1,000, it uses about a third of the memory as version 0.63. And it's faster for these large email sets.
  • Spam statistics keep track of # of new mail received, # spam caught, and # of false positives
  • There is a setting to remove the new mail icon if all new mail received is spam. Previously the new mail icon was removed if all new mail received is spam AND there were no unread emails in your inbox.
  • There's a setting to remove the Microsoft mail header tags from the probability analysis. Tags like X-Priority, X-MSMail-Priority, X-MimeOLE, etc. Since most of the email I get is from people using Outlook, these tags show up in most of my real email and as a result have a very low spam probability - between .02 and 0.04 currently. When I get spam that also has these tags, these low probability tags skew the spam percentage lower than it should be. So if you want to ignore these header tags, you now can if you want.
  • Bug fixes. Fixed the "Invalid property value" while Analyzing Words, and a few others.

    Thanks for your patience. Hopefully I can release this new version soon.

    2/5/03
    Version 0.64 is not out yet, but I wanted to mention a new feature in it. Automatic error reporting. When a run-time error occurs, this window will pop up:

    To automatically report the bug, just click the button. It will open a browser and automatically report the error to me via a web page. No personal info is sent. Just the error info. This will save you guys the hassle of emailing me so much! :)

    Hopefully you'll never actually SEE that screen at all, obviously.

    1/31/03
    Figured I'd give an update, as I haven't posted anything in a while. The next version is coming along a little slower than I'd like. Haven't had much free time lately. Extremely busy at my day job, and I'm getting married this summer, so we're trying to work out all the details. Not the ideal conditions for software development, but hopefully I'll have something out this weekend or soon thereafter.

    The next version is 0.64 beta and it has some new features. It doesn't have THE feature I want yet, which is the ability to Analyze Words and then delete the spam that was analyzed. Don't worry, that's coming. I promise. But the new version has the ability to mark all spam as read, as well as some mail and spam statistics for those of you keeping score at home. Plus it fixes the duplicates showing up in the "15 most significant" calculation. Actually you can now decide if you want duplicates or not via a checkbox. Use what works best for you.

    For those of you who've donated, thanks again, I really appreciate it.

    Quick question to the international users out there - can you email me and let me know if Spammunition is working okay for non-English versions of Outlook and Windows? Is it handling non-English character sets okay? Thanks.

    1/22/03
    For those of you who requested the ability to donate using PayPal, you can do that now. I finally setup a PayPal account. Click the PayPal link.

    For more info, go to the donations page.

    1/20/03
    Another new version out. 0.63 Beta. It's a bug fix release primarily. Not any new features to speak of, other than better memory optimization. Actually there is now a "Cancel" button in the "Analyze Words" screen. Pretty amazing, I know. If you were getting "Out of String Space" errors or "Out of Memory" errors, you should download and use this new release. Remember, uninstall it in Add/Remove Programs, and then run the install. Snag it in the download page.

    Older news in the archive.

    Chicago Dog Training

    ABOUT SPAMMUNITION

    Spammunition is a freeware add-in for Outlook 2000 (and higher) that helps you fight spam. It automatically filters spam out of your inbox when you receive new mail. Spammunition is integrated into Outlook so that it's easy to use. You don't ever need to leave Outlook to use Spammunition's features.

    It is currently BETA software. So you may notice bugs. I'm continually adding new features and trying to make it as stable as possible.

    Spammunition uses the Bayesian filtering techniques outlined in Paul Graham's article A Plan for Spam. Spammunition is simple to use, and successfully identifies 99% of the spam I get. The more spam you get, the better Spammunition is at filtering it out of your inbox.

    Spammunition does not work with Outlook Express, and as much as I'd like to, there are no plans to make an Outlook Express version. So please don't email me about it. :) Thanks.

    Click here for the installation and usage instructions.