Hello! [quote user="arisme"]OK, now I understand the reason why the POP3 filter does not work in the way I thought it might. However, I still cannot see how to make it work and will have to ask you to walk me through it, please.

The mailbox at the ISP has a message addressed to me with "Travel Promotions<booking@drivecomfort.com>" in the From field. The POP3 filter I created has a rule for:-

Headers, with trigger condition: F contains 'drivecomfort.com', and action 'Delete message on server'.

If I hit the Check mail button, a copy of the message is downloaded, but the original remains on the server. The same result with Send and Receive button.

So, I still have something not right. But what?

   ---oOo---

The rule negation suggestion sounds good, and logical, but will it not leave a growing pile of unwanted messages at the ISP?  I am sure that my ISP does not want or need a pile of garbage any more than I do.[/quote] Sorry for the late reply. I have to admit that I totally forgot about your question (shame on me!); and when reading it for the first time, I did not have a clue what to answer anyway. :-(

However, I think I can now suggest a proper solution. Concerning POP3-filtering rules, you have both to set them up and to define them in the respective POP3-definition. It seems you have not defined them in a POP3-definition. To do so, follow these steps:
(1) Choose the identity that you usually download the messages from the ISP in question with.
(2) Go to "Tools" | "Internet options". Open the "Receiving (POP3)"-tab.
(3) Select the POP3-definition that is set up for the ISP in question. Click "Edit...".
(4) The "Settings for retrieving mail (POP3)"-window is now open. Go to the "Download controls"-tab.
(5) You will find a section titled "Server-side mail filtering (uses POP3 filtering rule sets)". Click "Select", then select the appropriate POP3-filtering rule set.
(6) If the respective POP3-filtering rule set is set to check some lines of the message body, you should enter a value greater 0 for "Lines to retrieve from [...]". If your POP3-filterng rules only check for the headers, you can simply enter "0" there.
(7) Do not forget to click "OK".
 

Following your description, it seems you have forgot to apply step (5). Does that help?

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Concerning your second question (garbage saved at the ISP's end), there are several ways to handle that: you simply download all messages, so there are no older messages remaining on the server; you create some other POP3-filterng rules defining which messages to delete on server and which to download; you define a standard action what to do with those messages that have not been handled by any POP3-filtering rules (see the POP3-definition and its Download controls); provided that some messages remain on the server, you could check the server sometimes (perhaps every two weeks) to see what messages can manually be deleted on the server.

If you have any question about that, just ask...I will probably answer sooner than this time. :-)

Can anybody please rescue me from the growing chore of reading

through lists of sender names I do not know, or wish to know, and

subjects that do not interest me in the slightest?

I have tried to implement a POP3 filter that will delete on server if the From field contains specific text. The specific text that is tested by the filter is copied from the header of a selected message in the Selective download window.

It does not appear to work (so far) - the same messages appear every time in the Selective download list. So what am I missing?

The objective is to get as near as possible to the ideal spam filter which would automatically delete spam on the ISP server without even showing it in the Selective download window.  However, a list of proposed deletes would be acceptable.

I would also like to extend the POP3 filter with rules triggered by the absence of a full and complete personal address. A couple of my ISP's  treat the '@abc.xyz' part of my address as the mailbox, and consequently all the junk as well as the one with the correct address 'arisme@abc.xyz' is listed in the Selective download window. The spammers delight in this stupidity, and often the headers show cc lists with highly unlikely characters preceding the @ symbol.

However, I am reluctant to implement this rule until I can get the first POP3 filter above working satisfactorily.

Hello!

Selective Download lists all messages waiting on the POP3 mailbox - it is independent from the POP3-filtering rules.

The POP3-filtering rules only apply to POP3-downloading itself, whereas the Selective Download is just a kind of a preview where the POP3-filtering rules are not applied.

As far as your second question is concerned, you may consider to negate a rule. You can set up a POP3-filtering rule to download any message that contains the string "@invalid.com" (in the Cc:'s, for example), and after creating it, you simply choose to negate that rule (for example by right-clicking on the rule) - the result is a rule not to download any message that has the string "@invalid.com" within its Cc:.

Thomas,

Thank you for the response.

OK, now I understand the reason why the POP3 filter does not work in the way I thought it might. However, I still cannot see how to make it work and will have to ask you to walk me through it, please.

The mailbox at the ISP has a message addressed to me with "Travel Promotions<booking@drivecomfort.com>" in the From field. The POP3 filter I created has a rule for:-

Headers, with trigger condition: F contains 'drivecomfort.com', and action 'Delete message on server'.

If I hit the Check mail button, a copy of the message is downloaded, but the original remains on the server. The same result with Send and Receive button.

So, I still have something not right. But what?

   ---oOo---

The rule negation suggestion sounds good, and logical, but will it not leave a growing pile of unwanted messages at the ISP?  I am sure that my ISP does not want or need a pile of garbage any more than I do.

Aris