On Tuesday 16 Dec 2003 7:39 pm, barrie james wrote:

After more than 2 years without any kind of Microsoft products I thought viruses were a problem for others. Unfortunately I'm now being hit by one which is causing real problems. The POP3 mailbox on my ISP is getting 20+ mails a day with a virus attachment (W32/Gibe-F FWIW, though this isn't important) This means a 2-3MB daily download just to then delete the majority of the messages, and as I'm on 56k dialup this is an unwelcome and pointless task. I thought it would be a 1 or 2 day effect, but nearly a week on the flow hasn't let up at all. Does anyone know how to get just the message headers from a POP3 mailbox and then go back separately and delete the unwanted mails without actually downloading them all? Alternatively, I'd settle for a straight deletion of all messages without download if this is an option and I can't browse messages/headers first. I've got mutt, pine,and kmail running, but would go for any suitable MTA/MUA if I can achieve the desired effect. Any ideas/suggestions? Thanks

Barrie

I have the same problem and have solved it with kmail. Under settings/Configure kmail select Network then the receiving tab. Select your incoming account and press the Modify button. About two thirds of the way doen the general tab you will find a check box labelled 'Filter messages if they are greater than'. Check this box and set the bytes entry to a suitable value - I use 10K bytes. Click an Apply then cancel.

Now when you retrieve mail, any that exceeds the preset amount is listed in a popup box *before* it is downlaoded. In the popup you can for each message either delete (on the server), download now or defer till later. i just click delete on the span and then never get downloaded.

Ian