Yes, I’m mostly ignoring the comments on the ThunderBayes posts these days due to a lack of time to even do everything I want to do, let alone what other people want me to do. To be truthful, I don’t even use ThunderBayes anymore because all of my email accounts have been switched to gmail and the spam filtering there is Good Enough for now. That is not to say that ThunderBayes did not work for me when I did use it (it did everything I wanted it to do, and even did a good job at that). However, ThunderBayes is a bit of a kludge and certain parts of it need to be rewritten to be more usable by the average, non-hacker user. Unfortunately I do not have the time nor the will to fix it at this point. If someone else wants to pick up the project I’d be willing to talk (email me).

I do hope some people can still get some use out of the add-on, but at this point I am declaring it unsupported by me. Maybe I will find time sometime in the future to do more work on it, but don’t hold your breath. Others are free to share their solutions to problems of course. Ideally a forum should be setup somewhere because blog comments are not a good place have support discussions, so please refrain from doing that here. Does the Mozilla add-ons site have any type of forum or Q/A section for the community to provide support?

To those of you who are still brave enough to try it out, I would encourage you to first try the default setup with the internal SpamBayes filter. If that does not work, try installing and configuring SpamBayes separately and use the ThunderBayes Add-On options to make ThunderBayes talk to that manually installed copy of SpamBayes. I know that sounds ugly, but it might help some people to continue to use the extension even if it has a few flaws. (Most of the recent problems have been related to the internal SpamBayes config.)

With sincere regrets for not being able to answer every question and fix every problem related to ThunderBayes, I wish everyone who tries it out all the best.

Daniel

Download ThunderBayes 1.0.1

UPDATE: ThunderBayes 1.0.1 is now available.

Download ThunderBayes 1.0

Overview

ThunderBayes provides a toolbar button similar to Thunderbird’s Junk button with which email can be classified as Spam or Ham. Clicking the button causes two things to happen: (1) it sends the source of the selected messages to SpamBayes to be classified and (2) it optionally moves the messages to a folder of your choice (this can be configured in the extension options). It includes a custom version of SpamBayes, and provides a simple preference page in the Thunderbird Account Settings where the SpamBayes POP3 proxy and message filters can be configured.

Changes in this version

• Added integrated SpamBayes proxy server (can be disabled/bypassed).
• Added ThunderBayes configuration in Thunderbird Account Settings (POP3 accounts only).
• Implemented REST API for SpamBayes, which allows more efficient training and automatically updates the SpamBayes review page when training in Thunderbird.

Requirements/prerequisites

Everything needed to run ThunderBayes on Windows is included in the XPI file.

Non-Windows users must have Python 2.2 or later (2.3 recommended) installed. It works great with the Python 2.3.5 that ships with Mac OS X 10.4 (it should work fine with earlier versions of Mac OS X as well).

Recommended configuration:

• On the main menu bar select Tools->Account Settings…
  • Select the “ThunderBayes” pref page on any POP3 account with which you would like to use ThunderBayes spam classification and filtering.
  • Check “Enable ThunderBayes proxy for this account”. This will copy the real hostname and port for this account from the Server pref page to the ThunderBayes page. The Server page will be populated with the proxy hostname and port for this account. Note: this may not work if you are using an externally configured version of SpamBayes (i.e. not the internal version that ships with ThunderBayes).
  • Enable and configure filters if desired (you may want to do this later after you have trained SpamBayes and are confident that it is filtering mail correctly). WARNING: renaming the filters created by the ThunderBayes pref pane will prevent them from being edited from the pref pane–you will need to use the Message Filters list to edit them if you rename them.
• Enable the “Spam Status” column in your Inbox and other folder views by clicking the right-most column header (you should see a menu). Select the “Spam Status” item so there is a check mark beside it. The Spam Status column uses four icons to denote message status:
  • Spam – red circle with slash
  • Unsure – yellow question mark
  • Ham – gray dot
  • Unknown – gray question mark (this means the message did not have a “X-Spambayes-Classification” header, which probably means it did not pass through the SpamBayes proxy)
• Add the ThunderBayes “Spam” button to the toolbar. To add the button to the toolbar, right-click the toolbar and select “Customize…” Then drag the “Spam” icon into your toolbar and click “OK” on the “Customize Toolbar” dialog.

Migrating to ThunderBayes 1.0
(from any previous version)

As of version 1.0, ThunderBayes ships with a Python interpreter (Windows only)
and SpamBayes 1.0.4. This makes it very easy for anyone with Thunderbird to get
ThunderBayes installed and operational. Previously it was necessary to install
and configure SpamBayes before ThunderBayes actually did anything useful.

If you are one of the early adopters of ThunderBayes and went through all the
nuisance of setting up and configuring SpamBayes in addition to installing the
ThunderBayes extension then this section applies to you. Everyone else may skip
ahead to the next section.

These are the steps to migrate the data from your externally configured
SpamBayes to ThunderBayes’ internal version of SpamBayes. Read all of the
instructions before you start the migration process.

1. Shutdown Thunderbird.
2. Shutdown your SpamBayes proxy (disable automatic start as well).
3. Backup your Thunderbird profile. It’s easy. Instructions here: http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile#backup
4. If you skipped the previous step, go back and do it…really, you might need it if you do something wrong in the following steps. I usually like to make a zip archive of my profile so I don’t accidentally delete or change any of the files contained in it. That, and it’s easy to move around when it’s a single compressed file.
5. Make a new folder in your Thunderbird profile named ’spambayes_data’. The path should be something like this (the ‘default.xyz’ part will be different): <…>/Thunderbird/Profiles/default.xyz/spambayes_data
6. Find out where your existing SpamBayes data is stored. On Windows it might be
   C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\SpamBayes\Proxy
   On Mac OS X it might be in /Library/SpamBayes. If you can’t find it just search for some of the files in the next step–that should lead you to the right place.
7. Copy the following files and folders from your existing SpamBayes directory:
   • _pop3proxyham.mbox
   • _pop3proxyspam.mbox
   • bayescustomize.ini
   • hammie.* (i.e. any files that start with ‘hammie.’)
   • pop3proxy-ham-cache/* (folder and all files inside it)
   • pop3proxy-spam-cache/* (folder and all files inside it)
   • pop3proxy-unknown-cache/* (folder and all files inside it)
   • spambayes.messageinfo.db
8. Mac OS X and other Linux/Unix users: edit the bayescustomize.ini file and change each port listed on the line beginning with listen_ports to something higher than 1023. Then change each account in Thunderbird to use the new port assigned to that account (after the next step). Explanation: on Unix ports lower than 1024 are privileged and cannot be used by non-root users.
9. Start Thunderbird
10. If you haven’t already, install ThunderBayes 1.0 and restart Thunderbird

If everything went as planned you should have a fully functional ThunderBayes setup with the same SpamBayes configuration that you had before, except its now running the internal version of SpamBayes distributed with ThunderBayes.

After all that, I will tell you that migrating the SpamBayes database to use the internally bundled version of SpamBayes is not strictly necessary–the internal version can simply be disabled, and you may continue to use your externally configured version of SpamBayes. However, there are a few (minor) features in ThunderBayes that will not work correctly:

1. The ThunderBayes server name/port configuration in Thunderbird’s Account Settings will not work. Filter configurations will work, although you’ve probably already configured your own which will continue to work as well.
2. ThunderBayes ships with a patched version of SpamBayes that automatically updates the “Review” page in the SpamBayes proxy web interface upon training with a given message. If you don’t know what that is you don’t have to worry about it. However, if you opt to use an external version of SpamBayes this feature will not work in ThunderBayes 1.0. It did work in ThunderBayes 0.3, which was never formally released. The feature was reimplemented in ThunderBayes 1.0 as a custom extension to SpamBayes, which is much more efficient and makes the code much simpler.
3. ThunderBayes will not automatically start/stop SpamBayes when Thunderbird starts/stops (obviously).

To disable the internal SpamBayes shipped with ThunderBayes go to Tools->Add-
ons->Extensions->ThunderBayes->Preferences. Uncheck the “Use internal SpamBayes
proxy” checkbox.

Finally, a simpler option is just to disable your old SpamBayes proxy and install the new version of ThunderBayes. Configure your accounts in Thunderbird, and train from scratch. This will of course be a pain at first because you have to re-establish all of your training data, but it is very easy to get going
quickly. NOTE: when you configure your accounts you will need to set the server name and port in Server Settings back to the real server name and port BEFORE you configure the ThunderBayes page in Account Settings.

Download ThunderBayes 1.0rc4

• Re-implemented save routine in ThunderBayes Account Settings to respect the Cancel button after switching away from the ThunderBayes prefs page.
• ThunderBayes now recognizes localhost and 127.0.0.1 as being the same host name.
• The prefs page now displays the proxy host/port in addition to the real server/port.
• Updated migration guide to include note about privileged ports for Unix users.

Download ThunderBayes 1.0rc3

Download ThunderBayes 1.0rc2

Download ThunderBayes 1.0rc1 now and give it a try.

NOTE: for those already using ThunderBayes, please read the migration instructions before installing the new version.

This is a huge usability milestone. ThunderBayes now takes care of all the dirty work involved in installing and configuring SpamBayes, and it even makes it very simple to configure filters to move unsure/spam messages to folders of your choice. These new features are integrated into the Thunderbird Account Settings dialog, so you can configure ThunderBayes for each account at the intuitive place, with all the other account settings. Under the covers ThunderBayes also uses a new training API that allows more efficient training.

Migrating to ThunderBayes 1.0 (from any previous version)

As of version 1.0, ThunderBayes ships with a Python interpreter (Windows only) and SpamBayes 1.0.4. This makes it very easy for anyone with Thunderbird to get ThunderBayes installed and operational. Previously it was necessary to install and configure SpamBayes before ThunderBayes actually did anything useful.

Note for users on Mac OS or Linux: ThunderBayes will try to detect the pre-installed version of Python that came with your OS. If it doesn’t find it you’ll need set the Python executable in the ThunderBayes extension options (which can be found in the Add-ons list).

These are the steps to migrate the data from your externally configured SpamBayes to ThunderBayes’ new internal version of SpamBayes. Read all of the instructions before you start the migration process.

1. Shutdown Thundirbird.
2. Shutdown your SpamBayes proxy (disable automatic start as well).
3. Backup your Thunderbird profile. It’s easy.
4. If you skipped the previous step, go back and do it…really, you might need it if you do something wrong in the following steps. I usually like to make a zip archive of my profile so I don’t accidentally delete or change any of the files contained in it. That, and it’s easy to move around when it’s a single compressed file.
5. Make a new folder in your Thunderbird profile named ’spambayes_data’. The path should be something like this (the ‘default.xyz’ part will be different):
   <…>/Thunderbird/Profiles/default.xyz/spambayes_data
6. Find out where your existing SpamBayes data is stored. On Windows it might be C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\SpamBayes\Proxy. On Mac OS X it might be in /Library/SpamBayes. If you can’t find it just search for some of the files in the next step–that should lead you to the right place.
7. Copy the following files and folders from your existing SpamBayes directory:
   • _pop3proxyham.mbox
   • _pop3proxyspam.mbox
   • bayescustomize.ini
   • hammie.* (i.e. any files that start with ‘hammie.’)
   • pop3proxy-ham-cache/* (folder and all files inside it)
   • pop3proxy-spam-cache/* (folder and all files inside it)
   • pop3proxy-unknown-cache/* (folder and all files inside it)
   • spambayes.messageinfo.db
8. Mac OS X and other Linux/Unix users: edit the bayescustomize.ini file and change each port listed on the line beginning with listen_ports to a port number higher than 1023. Then change each account in Thunderbird to use the new port assigned to that account (after the next step). Explanation: on Unix ports lower than 1024 are privileged and cannot be used by non-root users.
9. Start Thunderbird
10. If you haven’t already, install ThunderBayes 1.0 and restart Thunderbird

If everything went as planned you should have a fully functional ThunderBayes setup with the same SpamBayes configuration that you had before, except its now running the internal version of SpamBayes distributed with ThunderBayes.

After all that, I will tell you that migrating the SpamBayes database to use the internally bundled version of SpamBayes is not strictly necessary–the internal version can simply be disabled, and you may continue to use your externally configured version of SpamBayes. However, there are a few (minor) features in ThunderBayes that will not work correctly:

1. The ThunderBayes server name/port configuration in Thunderbird’s Account Settings will not work. Filter configurations will work, although you’ve probably already configured your own which will continue to work as well.
2. ThunderBayes ships with a patched version of SpamBayes that automatically updates the “Review” page in the SpamBayes proxy web interface upon training with a given message. If you don’t know what that is you don’t have to worry about it. However, if you opt to use an external version of SpamBayes this feature will not work in ThunderBayes 1.0. It did work in ThunderBayes 0.3, which was never formally released. The feature was reimplemented in ThunderBayes 1.0 as a custom extension to SpamBayes, which is much more efficient and makes the code much simpler.
3. ThunderBayes will not automatically start/stop SpamBayes when Thunderbird starts/stops (obviously).

To disable the internal SpamBayes shipped with ThunderBayes go to Tools->Add-ons->Extensions->ThunderBayes->Preferences. Uncheck the “Use internal SpamBayes proxy” checkbox.

Finally, a simpler option is just to disable your old SpamBayes proxy and install the new version of ThunderBayes. Configure your accounts in Thunderbird, and train from scratch. This will of course be a pain at first because you have to re-establish all of your training data, but it is very easy to get going quickly. NOTE: when you configure your accounts you will need to set the server name and port in Server Settings back to the real server name and port BEFORE you configure the ThunderBayes page in Account Settings.

In plain English: it was a minor issue. Your error console will have less junk in it now.

Download: ThunderBayes 0.2.2

Update: works with Thunderbird 2.0.0.* as of 04/11/2007.

Download ThunderBayes 0.2.1

New features in this version:

• Improved the toolbar button to allow messages to be marked as ham or spam regardless of the actual spam status of the message.
• Added “Move on mark as ham” feature, which moves messages to Local Folders Inbox by default (the folder can be customized in the ThunderBayes extension options).
• Added two new columns to the message list (Thunderbird 2.0 only):
  1. Spam Status – a column that shows spam status with four icons:
     • Spam – red circle with slash
     • Unsure – yellow question mark
     • Ham – gray dot
     • Unknown – gray question mark (this means the message did not have a “X-Spambayes-Classification” header, which probably means it did not pass through the SpamBayes proxy)
  2. Spam Probability – a column that shows the spam probability as a percentage (0% is ham, 100% is spam). Note that this column will be blank for messages that were received before ThunderBayes 0.2 was installed.
• Added a new “unsure” button state to the toolbar button.
• Improved spam status recognition. ThunderBayes now uses the X-SpamBayes-Classification header to determine the spam status. In the past it relied on the junk status which was set using a filter.
• Thunderbird 2.0 compatibility.

Send bug reports and feature requests to . Include the word “ThunderBayes” in the subject line.

General Overview

What does it do?

It provides a toolbar button similar to Thunderbird’s Junk button to classify email as Spam or Ham. Clicking the button causes two things to happen: (1) it sends the source of the selected messages to SpamBayes for training and (2) it optionally moves the messages to a folder of your choice (this can be configured in the extension options). It actually does one more minor thing: it sets the X-Spambayes-Classification header to the appropriate value. Give it a try, you’ll see how it works.

What it does not do:

• It does not install SpamBayes (at this point the SpamBayes proxy must be installed and configured externally from Thunderbird). A future version of ThunderBayes may install SpamBayes automatically.
• It does not filter mail classified by SpamBayes (Thunderbird’s powerful built-in filters can be configured to move spam classified by SpamBayes to whatever folder you choose and/or change the junk status of incoming email). Automatic filtering is planned for a future release.

Prerequisites for using ThunderBayes:

• Install and configure the SpamBayes proxy. Windows users can go to the Windows page and look at the section entitled Non Outlook Solutions.
• Configure your email account(s) in Thunderbird to use the proxy.

Thunderbird configuration recommendations (do this for each account that uses the proxy):

• Disable the built-in junk mail controls (uncheck “Enable adaptive junk mail detection” on Adaptive Filter tab of Junk Mail Controls dialog).
• Create a new message filter named “ThunderBayes-spam”
  Match any of the following
  “X-SpamBayes-Classification” is “spam” (use “Customize…” to add the new header)
  Move Message to Junk on Local Folders
  Mark As Read (if you’re feeling confident)
• Create a new folder named “Unsure” (this is for messages classified by SpamBayes as “unsure”)
• Create a new message filter named “ThunderBayes-unsure”
  Match any of the following
  “X-SpamBayes-Classification” is “unsure”
  Move Message to Unsure (the new folder)

Install ThunderBayes and add the “Spam” button to the toolbar. To add the button to the toolbar, right-click the toolbar and selecting “CustomizeÖ” Then drag the “Spam” icon into your toolbar and click “OK” on the “Customize Toolbar” dialog.

This extension was born from my frustration with Thunderbird’s built-in spam filtering features. While I enjoyed the ability to classify email as spam/ham within Thunderbird, the built-in spam filter was not effective enough to make it usable on a long-term basis. Having past experience with SpamBayes, I immediately looked for the best way to integrate the two. Unfortunately, aside from an old rumor I found nothing. So I settled for the pop3 proxy distributed with SpamBayes. While this provided good spam classification results, it left room for improvement on the training procedure. The browser-based training mechanism, while effective, was not convenient and essentially required me to classify most spam that made it to my inbox twice: once to move it to the Junk folder within Thunderbird and once to classify it as spam in the SpamBayes web-interface. Hopefully this will put an end to the frustration.

This release is a minimal update: ThunderBayes how displays a progress bar while messages are being processed.

However, I will note that I am very pleased with the results of using the extension. Before I started using ThunderBayes I got 10 to 15 spam emails in my inbox per day. Now I get one or two! All due to a simple and convenient method of training SpamBayes.