Spam or Junk?

Thunderbird is responsible if it's being marked as Junk, but someone else is to blame if it's being labelled as Spam. Probably your ISP or email provider, or possibly your own security software.

In theory, if the sender's address is in your Address Book their messages should never be treated (by Thunderbird) as Junk. However I have a few such which are regularly marked as Junk and I don't know what's confusing it.

My question is how to tell TB that a mislabelled message is Not Junk and that a sender is ok.

The address has been in my address book for years. Suddenly they are being mislabelled as Junk.

Does anybody have a suggestion for solution?

Please answer all questions as the answers will depend on how to remedy this: Note the wording is important.

Q : Are you talking about a POP or IMAP mail account? Q : Is the email in a folder called 'Junk' or 'Spam' ? Q : Is the email marked as 'Spam' or 'Junk'?

When you select email to read in lower message pane,: Q : What does it say word for word? Does it say: 'This message may be a scam' OR 'Thunderbird thinks this is Junk Mail'

Q : Did you set up your Junk Controls and then train them? Q : Is the email address/contact in one of your address books?

Right click on mail account name and select 'Settings' Select 'Junk Settings' for the mail account.

Please answer the following or simply post an image of the Junk Settings. Q : Is this selected: 'enable adaptive junk controls for this account' ? Q : Have you selected the address book(s) containing the email addresses of contacts whom you do not want to be automatically marked as junk? Q : Have you selected to 'Trust junk mail headers set by' If yes, set by what? Spamassassin ?

Toad-Hall said

Please answer all questions as the answers will depend on how to remedy this: Note the wording is important.

Q : Are you talking about a POP or IMAP mail account? Relleti: IMAP (yahoo)

Q : Is the email in a folder called 'Junk' or 'Spam'? Relleti: Bulk mail

Q : Is the email marked as 'Spam' or 'Junk'? When you select email to read in lower message pane,:What does it say word for word? Does it say: 'This message may be a scam' OR 'Thunderbird thinks this is Junk Mail' Relleti: "Thunderbird thinks this message is Junk mail"

Q : Did you set up your Junk Controls and then train them? Relleti: Yes, as described above; trained them for this sender and messages more than 100 times.

Q : Is the email address/contact in one of your address books? Relleti: As described above: yes, sender is in both my address books.

Right click on mail account name and select 'Settings' Select 'Junk Settings' for the mail account."

Please answer the following or simply post an image of the Junk Settings. Q : Is this selected: 'enable adaptive junk controls for this account' ? Relleti: Yes

Q : Have you selected the address book(s) containing the email addresses of contacts whom you do not want to be automatically marked as junk? Relleti: Yes

Q : Have you selected to 'Trust junk mail headers set by' If yes, set by what? Spamassassin ? Relleti: No.

Why did you say "SPAM" when it's actually "Bulk Mail"?

Yahoo based accounts have a Bulk Mail folder and the email provider (e.g. Yahoo) filters what they think is junk/spam/uce into this folder. You need to go to the email provider's website to see what can be done to influence its behaviour.

Most of Toad-Hall's detailed and very patient questioning is actually irrelevant now that you have said this.

Dear Zenos, thank you for your efforts to help.

When I am writing that I am no IT expert, I mean it. I do not know the difference between Junk, Bulk, Spam. How could I And then - if you are making an effort to help people like me, I would appreciate you to take that into account. Otherwise, your last comment, that I take as condescending under the circumstance, are not helpful to me. Thunderbird calls it Junk. The folder is called Bulk Mail. I have another folder called Junk in the list of folders but the messages are not moved here. (non of the Junk/.Bulk/SPAM messages are). Take your pic.

I am turning to you (all) because I am looking to solve a problem.

As mentioned several times, when I access my online account directly, the message is not flagged as Junk, Bulk, Spam or any other way than any normal email message (or whatever you may call it).

Just for you information, the notifications that I receive from this forum are also marked by Thunderbird as "Thunderbird thinks this is Junk mail". But they stay in the inbox and are not moved to either the Junk folder nor the Bulk mail folder. (but they stay in the inbox on the server, too, if that is valid information or not, I do not know).

I have said twice now and I don't know how else to say it. Thunderbird uses the word "Junk".

If it's called, labelled or tagged anything else such as Spam or Bulk Mail, or moved into any folder other than one called "Junk" then something external to Thunderbird has done this for you.

Delete the Bulk Mail folder and it will re-appear, because your email provider's software creates it, not Thunderbird.

You email provider is putting materal into Bulk Mail. You need to work with them to regulate what it does. It is outside of Thunderbird's control.

My approach is, after vetting (because automated spam filters often make mistakes) is to mark all relevant Spam or Bulk Mail as Junk to help reinforce Thunderbird's own Junk Controls. Just as I am also careful to mark good messages as Not Junk when they have been incorrectly categorized.

Material found in folders with names such as Spam or Bulk Mail were put there by your email provider, and you need to correct them when they get it wrong.

to illustrate what I mean are these two screenshots where the messages from this forum are marked (or not) as "TB thinks this is Junk".

In TB, all three messages stay in the inbox.

On the server, all three messages stay in the inbox. Here, none of them is identified as SPAM, bulk, Junk or any other particular way.

not being sure whether this can provide helpful information, I can also provide the screenshots that identify the "Bulk mail" folder with the TB Flame symbol (indicating to a person like me that TB recognises it somehow as being the "folder-for-not-wanted-mail", whereas the "Junk" folder appears as just another folder...

the folder on the server is called "SPAM"

There is a second address, "Reply-to: no-reply@mozilla.org" which is not currently in your Address Book. Try adding that one. (I use a separate address book within the Address Book for such no-reply type addresses.)

Junk mail identification works on the content, not the sender. Yours has learnt that some combination of factors found in these messages resembles Junk email. If Junk classification is persistently miscategorizing good messages, I would go to Tools|Options and reset the training data.

Having said that, it shouldn't treat messages from known senders as Junk. I am suspicious that this doesn't always work, as we can see that the From: address is already in your Address Book. Let's see if adding the second (Reply-to:) address helps.

Another way of forcing the issue is to set up a Message Filter to handle specific senders. This filter might set the Junk status to Not Junk and also move these messages to an appropriate folder. I have found that some servers won't be told that a message is Not Junk, and won't stop treating it as Junk until it is removed from their sight. Moving the message to another folder, ideally outside of the account in question, can be useful.

SPAM and Bulk Mail remain as separate issues, as does Yahoo's decision to present a folder with different names in different contexts. Yahoo often do strange things; I don't have any great respect for them.

I have 11 or so accounts set up in Thunderbird. Some of them, like yours, have multiple locations for unwanted mail. My approach to managing these is to set up a Saved Search which aggregates all the various junk/spam/bulk folders into one. Then, by and large, I don't need to even care how the messages got there.

Thanks. adding the new address does not seem to change anything. I added the additional email address to my address book. Double checked that the address book is accessed for Junk identification.Flagged it several times to TB as "Not Junk". Issue still remains.

Will reset training data and see what happens.

You mention in your first answer that you have the same issue and did not find a solution. ("... I have a few such which are regularly marked as Junk and I don't know what's confusing it."). Has any of the suggestions you are making here solved your issue in the meantime?

How do I set up a Saved Search? Do you mean: Junk setting> Destination and Retention> Move new junk messages to... and then collecting Junk from several accounts to one folder?