This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How to whitelist a trusted email address going to Junk

  • 6 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by david

more options

Email from a trusted address over past decade is suddenly going to Junk as of today. Cannot see how to whitelist the Sender, and googling the question tells me to go to Tools>Options, however Options does not show in the Tools menu.

Email from a trusted address over past decade is suddenly going to Junk as of today. Cannot see how to whitelist the Sender, and googling the question tells me to go to Tools>Options, however Options does not show in the Tools menu.
Attached screenshots

Chosen solution

david said

There is no whitelist feature in Thunderbird.

Actually there is David. The entire address book by default, although individual address books can be selected and deselected in account settings > Junk Settings. I have already told the OP this in another topic he posted in. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1439443#answer-1656292


Derek Williams said

Email from a trusted address over past decade is suddenly going to Junk as of today. Cannot see how to whitelist the Sender, and googling the question tells me to go to Tools>Options, however Options does not show in the Tools menu.

  • This image shows spam items with the message subject edited to include the text ** SPAM **.
  • It is also clear that the flame icon between the name and date columns is not the red it is set to when Thunderbird marks a message as Junk/SPAM.

These two things are an obvious and definitive proof that Thunderbird did not detect this email as spam. You are looking for an outside source to Thunderbird. Thunderbird does not make any modification to the email subject and does set the junk/spam flag so the icon will be red.

A google search of ** SPAM ** indicates that Avast adds this when it's spam engine thinks it has found spam. https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=177712.0

As Gen digital own all of the following brands Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender and CCleaner it would be reasonable to expect all of them to do something similar if they have a spam/scam detection module so as I told you before, look to your antivirus product.

Then look at your mail providers website for spam filtering options. This thread indicates that spamassasin a server side product also adds the subject entry ** SPAM **. https://support.google.com/mail/thread/14798766/emails-being-sent-to-people-with-spam-headers?hl=en

What exactly is the cause of your issue today is not clear. What is clear is Thunderbird is not the issue on this occasion, only the messenger.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (6)

more options

There is no whitelist feature in Thunderbird. (Note: Tools>Options has been changed to Tools>Setting.) You might see if the online account is doing this, or whether the online account can whitelist it there. All I can suggest is to regularly mark as not spam. Another trick would be to create a filter for this address to mark as not junk.

Helpful?

more options

Thanks, I will try this.

Helpful?

more options

Chosen Solution

david said

There is no whitelist feature in Thunderbird.

Actually there is David. The entire address book by default, although individual address books can be selected and deselected in account settings > Junk Settings. I have already told the OP this in another topic he posted in. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1439443#answer-1656292


Derek Williams said

Email from a trusted address over past decade is suddenly going to Junk as of today. Cannot see how to whitelist the Sender, and googling the question tells me to go to Tools>Options, however Options does not show in the Tools menu.

  • This image shows spam items with the message subject edited to include the text ** SPAM **.
  • It is also clear that the flame icon between the name and date columns is not the red it is set to when Thunderbird marks a message as Junk/SPAM.

These two things are an obvious and definitive proof that Thunderbird did not detect this email as spam. You are looking for an outside source to Thunderbird. Thunderbird does not make any modification to the email subject and does set the junk/spam flag so the icon will be red.

A google search of ** SPAM ** indicates that Avast adds this when it's spam engine thinks it has found spam. https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=177712.0

As Gen digital own all of the following brands Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender and CCleaner it would be reasonable to expect all of them to do something similar if they have a spam/scam detection module so as I told you before, look to your antivirus product.

Then look at your mail providers website for spam filtering options. This thread indicates that spamassasin a server side product also adds the subject entry ** SPAM **. https://support.google.com/mail/thread/14798766/emails-being-sent-to-people-with-spam-headers?hl=en

What exactly is the cause of your issue today is not clear. What is clear is Thunderbird is not the issue on this occasion, only the messenger.

Helpful?

more options

Thanks, Matt and David

Helpful?

more options

Today I found an Email from my brother in trash. (Thunderbird 128.4.3esr) The status bar above the message said "Thunderbird thinks this message may be a scam." There were no attachments or URLs in the message. His address is in my address book. There was no "JUNK" in the subject line. I have a filter set to run "before junk detection" that moves messages from him into their own folder. I can find nothing that would suggest why it would classify his message as a scam, it SHOULD have been whitelisted, It SHOULD have been taken out of the INBOX before spam detection was even performed, yet it was classified as spam and put in the "Junk" folder.

For those reasons, I don't find the "chosen solution" to be an adequate explanation.

Helpful?

more options

This will not be resolved here, as no one here has full access to the history of the email. It could be because of an IP address conflict, or problems with the email host. As I mentioned in prior notes, there is no whitelist. Entries in the addressbook only state that the email will not default to spam. Confirming why a specific email is considered suspicious could require hours of detail study. No simple answers.

Helpful?

Ask a question

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.