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FYI for anyone who's thinking of working with Outlook at the plugin/pst level; spambayes have done the legwork ;) - --j. - ------- Forwarded Message > Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 14:09:07 -0500 > From: "Seth Goodman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [spamtools] Constructing whitelists? > > From: Ronald F. Guilmette > Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 1:21 PM > > <...> > > There's no problem at all with that idea. The only problem > is that with respect to the Outlook personal address list > and its contents, I have the same exact problem as I > originally stated I had for the Outlook `Sent' folder, > i.e. I have no idea of its internal format, and also, I am > not aware of any open source software tools to read and > decode those address book files. So if anybody knows of > any open source tool which can perform THIS job, I would > very much like to be informed about that also. > > open source != MS > > Good luck on that one. > > >This feature was apparently added for the convenience > >of virus writers, who it appears were one of the key groups > >that set the design requirements for this product, > > Good point. > > So if I want source code for a software tool that can extract > addresses from a personal Outlook address book, I guess that > I should just go out and hire a virus writer! Hummm. > I would have no problem with that. At least this would give > them some honest work for a change... keeping them > off the streets and out of trouble for a short while. > > So now, where does one post a `HELP WANTED' ad for a virus writer? > > They probably know more about the innards of Outlook than Microsoft > does. I really like the idea of hiring a virus writer for honest work, > but I'd still watch my back. You can take the boy out of the city ... > You've really hit on a great idea, though. > > If you want some guidance on the undocumented guts of Outlook, try Mark > Hammond at the Spambayes project. He was the lead in taking their (open > source) Bayesian filter (Python for both 'nix and 'doze) and integrating > it with Outlook. Prior to that, and for all other mail clients, > Spambayes used a browser-based interface. IMHO, the integration job was > very well done. The project is open source, so you can see how they > dealt with Outlook's non-standard (surprise!) message store. As part of > the MS insecurity through obscurity program, Outlook destroys all the > MIME armor of a message before storing it in non-RFC2822 format, leaving > you to guess what it previously looked like. The Spambayes crowd has > developed standalone utilities for exporting an Outlook message store > into normal mbox files, which does the guessing for you. At the very > least, looking at their code will show you what you're up against. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Exmh CVS iD8DBQFBG9QwQTcbUG5Y7woRAlubAJ9V1+dEDqNLCdU0bBxi8rXifzoeAQCgrfLv dZsjmrt0GvUBMqvSUiNRo7M= =bxOf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
