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How come only sometimes spam ends up in Trash folder instead of Junk Folder?

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Zenos

adamforrest
adamforrest
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I cannot figure out why sometimes messages automatically marked as Spam are being moved to my Trash folder instead of my Junk folder. Most of the time, they do go in the Junk folder, but not always. I turned on Message Filter logging and it doesn't seem to be caused by a filter I created.

I connect to my eMail server using IMAP. I use Thunderbird on two computers, my main computer, an iMac running El Capitan, and a Windows 10 laptop, but I have confirmed that the Windows laptop is off at the same time that new Spam messages have ended up in the Trash folder.

I don't empty my trash folder, my goal is to keep Trash as a "default" kind of an archive, but it dirties the archive by being filled with Spam that should just be in the Junk folder and deleted every thirty days.

Thanks for any help you can give me on this slightly vexing problem.

I cannot figure out why sometimes messages automatically marked as Spam are being moved to my Trash folder instead of my Junk folder. Most of the time, they do go in the Junk folder, but not always. I turned on Message Filter logging and it doesn't seem to be caused by a filter I created. I connect to my eMail server using IMAP. I use Thunderbird on two computers, my main computer, an iMac running El Capitan, and a Windows 10 laptop, but I have confirmed that the Windows laptop is off at the same time that new Spam messages have ended up in the Trash folder. I don't empty my trash folder, my goal is to keep Trash as a "default" kind of an archive, but it dirties the archive by being filled with Spam that should just be in the Junk folder and deleted every thirty days. Thanks for any help you can give me on this slightly vexing problem.

All Replies (1)

Zenos
Zenos
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Thunderbird's own Junk Controls use the term "Junk" for messages it considers bad. Messages marked as "spam" or placed into a "spam" folder are being handled by something outside Thunderbird; this could be your email provider, your own security software or a service such as SpamAssassin.

In short, nothing you do inside Thunderbird can affect the operation of an external process.

It's usually productive to go to your email provider's website, log into your email account there, and look for "not spam" checkboxes or other whitelisting options. A few providers (yahoo comes to mind) appear not to offer any options to allow the user to decide for himself what is and isn't "spam".

I don't know what's moving spam to Trash. I can't agree with your use of Trash as an archiving function, but that's by the by.

Rather than asking for Spam to go into the Junk folder (again this may require a visit to the website to set this up, if actually possible) another approach is to use a Saved Search folder to aggregate all your different storage locations for spam/junk into one virtual folder. If you can filter for a "spam" label (Saved Searches are based on filtering), this could include the Trash folder(s) for the spammy items that escape there.

Modified by Zenos