The plug-in starts filtering spam immediately after the installation. As a matter of fact, the email client performs filtering, whereas the plug-in only assigns spam ratio to the incoming messages. Therefore you need to configure The Bat! settings first.

Go to Options->Preferences->Anti-spam. The following options are available:

• Of 100 score to be used for actions below
  If you have only one plug-in installed, then this parameter is useless.
• Delete a message if the score is greater than.
  Defines the minimum amount of points needed before a message should be deleted. This is very destructive parameter so don't check it. You will be unable to recover misclassified and deleted emails otherwise.
• Move a message to the Junk folder if the score is greater than.
  Defines the minimum amount of points needed to automatically move a message to the Junk folder. The higher value you set, the higher probability of false negatives you get (when spam is misclassified as normal message). From the other side, the probability of false positives becomes lower in that case (when normal messages are misclassified as spam). The default value is 60 and it is good enough in most cases. If set it to 80-90, then you probably will get more misclassified spam in your mailbox, but the probability of false positives will be much lower.
• Mark stored junk mail as read.
  This is self-explained option and it is convenient to have it turned on.
• Move messages marked as junk to the Junk folder.
  If this option is turned on, then the messages will be moved to Junk folder automatically when you mark them as spam.
• Use common Junk folder.
  You can set this option if you want, it doesn't influence the filtering quality.

Now you can start configuring the plug-in. Select AntispamSniper from a list and press Configure. A window with the plug-in settings will appear. You can leave there the default values or read the other topics of this manual and do something interesting (Statistics, Filtering, Options).

If you have some amount of normal and spam messages in your email client, then it makes sense to teach the plug-in on them. For teaching you can use the correspondent menu items in The Bat! - "Specials->Mark as Junk" and "Specials->Mark as NOT Junk". Just select one or more messages of the certain class and press one of the menu items. For convenience you can set shortcuts for these actions. New versions of The Bat! allows it in Customize window (View->Toolbars->Customize).

A whitelist is filled automatically when you teaching the filter on non-spam messages. The more non-spam messages you mark, the more contacts will be listed. The messages from friendly addresses are not filtered and it is the best protection from misclassification by other methods. The classifier needs messages of both classes. So feed it your junk messages also if you have some.

Anti-phishing filter is turned on by default, but you can turn it off if you don't need it.

Tune up the DNSBL and Black words mechanisms for filtering the messages by headers. For allowing the plug-in to delete spam right on the server, fill up the list of POP3 accounts on Servers page. Don't forget to raise the server timeouts in account properties window of The Bat! for avoiding breaking of connections when the plug-in is checking headers on the server.

Then you can set Testing mode and see in Filtering log how the filter classifies your existing messages. If you see the mistakes, then you can teach the plug-in on misclassified messages. The initial configuration is completed if you satisfied with the results.

You can continue using the email client as usual. It is necessary to review Junk folder and search for misclassified messages. It is especially important in the beginning, when the plug-in is not learned enough to avoid false positives. The probability of such mistakes will go lower fast while the plug-in is learning.