NAME

filtermail - Filters e-mail, gets rid of spam

SYNOPSIS

filtermail [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION

filtermail is a very flexible utility to get rid of unwanted spam mails, before having to go through the trouble of downloading them into the local computer. It offers support for one or many POP accounts and is especially useful for dialup connections via modem, ISDN, etc.

filtermail connects to any POP mail box and compares part of its content to a set of user defined filter rules. That way the spam gets deleted directly on the mail server.

With filtermail you can define your own filters (rules) to determine which e-mails should be delivered and which are considered waste. Rules are Regular Expressions, so you can make use of familiar options from other mail delivery programs such as procmail(1) for example.

RETURN VALUE

The filtermail program normally returns 0 but -1 if an error occurs. However, if it has been invoked with the return-value command line switch, it gives back a positive integer in case there are messages on the POP server. Empty POP accounts would then result in a return value of 0. Using the switch, filtermail can be embedded into a shell script more easily.

CONFIGURATION

The behaviour of filtermail is controlled by command-line options and a configuration file. The program will not start without it. Example configurations can be looked up in the filtermailex(5) man page, in the INSTALL document or inside the doc/ directory of the filtermail distribution.

By default filtermail tries to read $HOME/.filtermailrc to get all its settings from. This is the place where all changes should be made, unless it is explicitly specified otherwise. A comprehensive list of all supported options and keywords can be found in the filtermailrc(5) man page.

OPTIONS

-h, --help: Display help information
-L, --logfile=FILE: Specify logfile location
-M, --filtermailrc=FILE: Specify rcfile location
-r, --return-value: Enable additional return values
-t, --test: Simulate deletes
-i, --ignore-time-stamps: Ignore invalid Message-ID time stamps (Do not use unless you know better!)
-v, --verbose=LEVEL: Specify level of verbosity
-V, --version: Display version information

COPYRIGHT

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.