Junk mail filtering too much

I've recently been having an issue with junk mail filtering in Mac OS X Mtn Lion.
Along with normal junk mail, messages from addresses in my Address Book and Previous Recipients are being filtered as junk.  I've checked the appropriate boxes in Preferences to prevent this, but it seems to have no effect.
Even worse, it's filtering as junk email I sent to myself from my work email to my home email (both are in Address Book).
Has anyone else had this problem?  Any ideas on how to resolve it?

Do you have any rules defined that are marking messages as junk? Check all rules very carefully, and consider termporarily disabling all of them just to see if that makes any difference.
BTW, note that this is the Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) forum... you'll get better answers posting in the Lion (10.7) forum, since you're running Lion. I've asked the hosts to move this topic over there.

Similar Messages

  • Disable Junk Mail Filtering on a Specific Account

    Is there a way to disable junk mail filtering on a specific account?
    My Mac at home is always running Mail, which checks my work email. When I am at work, Mail (at home) sometimes marks a message as junk, and therefore my work mail program (Thunderbird) never gets it.
    I know I could just close Mail when I leave home, but then I'd have to open it again when I get home and that's too much trouble.
    Thanks!
    Powermac G5   Mac OS X (10.4.2)   Mail 2.1

    You're welcome.
    I'm still interested though if this is possible...
    I am almost 100% certain there is not a way to enaable/disable junk mail filtering by account with the Mail.app.
    For now, I've disabled moving junk mail to a different folder,
    so it just marks it as junk and doesn't move it.
    There is no selection to move messages marked as junk to a different mailbox. When Junk Mail is set to Automatic, messages automatically or manually marked as junk are moved to the account's Junk mailbox automatically. When Junk Mail is set to Training, messages automatically or manually marked as junk remain in the account's Inbox mailbox.
    You don't have Junk Mail set to Automatic with the Mail.app?
    If not set to Automatic, messages marked as junk by the Mail.app will remain in the account's Inbox mailbox and will not removed from the server.
    If set to Automatic, you can select "Store junk messages on the server" under the Mailbox Behaviors tab for the account preferences. This way, any messages automatically marked as junk by the Mail.app will be stored on the server when the message is automatically moved to the account's Junk mailbox which will allow access to the same message when using another email client on a different computer at work.
    This is a benefit of an IMAP type account over a POP type account so you have two options here.
    Set Junk Mail to Automatic and store Junk messages on the server with the Mail.app or quit the Mail.app when leaving home.

  • Junk Mail Filtering - is it me or is it just rubbish?

    Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere, but didn't have the patience to wade through all the threads. Hopefully someone can help...
    Frankly, I think the filtering on Mail (using 3.5 with OSX 10.5.6) is hopeless. Simply put, I've tried configuring it every which way in Preferences but the same issues persist. The main one being that when I configure to "exclude" those in my address book and/or previous recipients list from junk mail filtering ...people in my address book (SPECIFICALLY ME) still end up in the junk mail folder.
    I have 2 accounts: Mail.com (POP3) and Gmail (IMAP) and I use an iPhone for mobile access. And I have a work email. All three are in my address card in Address Book.
    Yet whenever I send myself (or anyone else) an email -- either from work or from my iPhone or even from within Mail -- it still ends up in the junk mail folder.
    I think the problem is that Mail's filtering doesn't look at email addresses. It must look at how the name is set up??? i.e., LAST FIRST or FIRST LAST, etc. and when any of these don't match up it puts it into junk mail folder????
    It just seems rubbish to me. Outlook had much more sophisticated filtering options\rule set up.
    Anyone got any ideas on how to solve this? Thanks.

    Mulder wrote:
    If you have multiple email addresses in your card in Address Book, which messages are going to Junk, and what email address was used?
    All three emails go to junk. My work to either personal address. Gmail to Mail and Mail to Gmail emails all go to junk
    Have you tried setting up the Junk filter so that:
    If any of the following conditions are met:
    *Sender is not in my Address Book*
    *Sender is not in my Previous Recipients*
    Message is Junk Mail
    Perform the following actions:
    *Move message to mailbox: (Junk mailbox On My Mac)*
    Yep. Tried that. Still didn't work. Even tried ticking "not junk" on each of the several tests I've sent myself -- and then re-sent more tests, which still ended up in junk????
    As I said, I've tried virtually every possible configuration of boxes ticked and unticked and nothing...
    My latest setting (using your advanced rules above) were:
    Enable Junk Mail - ticked
    When Junk Mail arrives - 'perform custom actions'
    Msgs Exempt - In address book and previous recipients both ticked. Use my full name unticked
    Trust ISP headers - unticked
    Filter before applying rules - have tried this both ticked and unticked... same result
    Thanks,
    The Smoking Man
    PS - Should add that when others send me email to the Gmail or Mail accounts they properly go to inbox, not junk. It's just when I send myself something (anything, really)...

  • Junk mail filtering problem

    My Mail v2.1 (752/752.2) has learned, and presumably is still learning on an ever-ongoing basis, what is Junk and what is not Junk mail and it seems to be pretty accurate.
    However, it always treats two specific senders, from which I receive emails fairly regularly, as Junk no matter how many times I click the Not Junk button to tell Mail that they are not junk.
    Why does it persist in failing to learn these two specific sender addresses and how can I "force" it to learn without dumping the whole Junk filtering criteria and starting again?
    Thanks.

    Ok, here goes ...
    added to the Window > Previous Recipients - Yes, both are there.
    Sender of message is in my Previous Recipients is checked - No, it asn't but it is now!
    Have you made any changes to the junk filter in Preferences > Junk Mail > Advanced? - Not knowingly. The logic is: If All: Sender is not in my previous Recipients > Sender is not in my addresss book > Message is Junk mail then Move message to Junk.
    Go to Preferences > Junk Mail, disable junk mail filtering, then enable it again. - Done.
    Choose either Training or Automatic mode - Automatic selected.
    lick Advanced to see how the junk filter rule is defined now - The logic now is: If All: Sender is not in my previous Recipients > Sender is not in my addresss book > Message is Junk mail then Move message to Junk which looks pretty much the same to me except for the order, but that shouln't matter should it?
    but don’t touch anything there - I wouldn't dare! :-))
    Thanks, I'll report back when I receive any new emails from them. As one of them is news alerts from Lynchburg, Virginia there will peoably be a few after this afternoon's (UK time) news of today's shootings.

  • Junk mail filtering only working on internal mail (and only some of them)

    Good morning
    I'm trying to get Junk Mail filtering working properly on my server (currently running 10.5.6). All mail that comes from externally doesn't seem to pass through the spam filter at all. It gets scanned for viruses (in the email header i get "X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at example.co.uk" but no sign of any spam filtering.
    I have previously configured the filtering using the instructions here http://www.netmojo.ca/blog/2009/04/13/spam-proofing-leopard-server/ but i had been searching through the support here and had started following the instructions in the OS X mail manual, creating a junkmail user and forwarding email to it. Whilst doing this i noticed that some emails had started to be tagged as junk using the settings i had set in server admin. These have something like the following in the email header:
    X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at example.co.uk
    X-Spam-Flag: YES
    X-Spam-Score: 3.479
    X-Spam-Level: *
    X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=3.479 tagged_above=2 required=2
    tests=[ALL_TRUSTED=-1.44, AWL=0.286, HTML_MESSAGE=0.001,
    RAZOR2CF_RANGE_51100=0.5, RAZOR2CF_RANGE_E8_51100=1.5,
    RAZOR2_CHECK=0.5, URIBLOBSURBL=2.132]
    However those emails not tagged as spam do not have any such lines. I would have expected to see X-Spam-Flag: NO and the spam score and such. Are these lines hidden if a mail does not trigger the threshold?
    I've had this aparently learning for about a week now and even with the setting set on 1 it's still yet to catch a single piece of junk mail entering into the server.
    I do have emails to quite a few different domains directed to this server so i added the lines suggested here http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7034527&#7034527 to /etc/amavisd.conf but to no avail.
    Any suggestions? Any parts of any log files that may be of use? I've been looking at the junk mail log in debug mode in SA and also in terminal but there's so many lines per mail it's difficult to see what's going on. I can't see anything different from one mail to the next...
    Thanks

    I would have expected to see X-Spam-Flag: NO and the spam score and such. Are these lines hidden if a mail does not trigger the threshold.
    You need to edit /etc/amavisd.conf and set:
    $satag_leveldeflt = -999;
    This will make sure all mails get the headers inserted.
    Also make sure that "@bypassspam_checksmaps = (1); " is commented out.
    That said, the Bayesian filter will need to be fed at least 200 HAM and 200 SPAM messages before it kicks in.
    Each time you modify settings in amavisd.conf, you need to restart amavisd by issuing:
    sudo /bin/launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amavis.amavisd.plist
    sudo /bin/launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amavis.amavisd.plist
    HTH,
    Alex
    P.S. When you make changes in Postfix' configuration files, simply issue "sudo postfix reload" to make the m stick. No need to stop Postfix (BTW: That article you linked to is full of inaccuracies).

  • Junk Mail filters

    I have been having a problem with the Junk mail filters in Mail. When I send myself an e-mail, such as when an iCal event reminder is in the form of an e-mail, the message gets pushed into my junk mail folder. Every time it has happened, I click on the "Not Junk" button, but the next time I send one, it goes into the Junk folder again. This happened with OS 10.4, and I thought the upgrade to 10.5 would fix it, but it's still happening.
    Has anyone else had this experience? If so, did you find a solution to the problem?
    Thanks
    Kevin

    if so, I'd love to hear it as well. I made a big effort to convert my old email life from my pc to the new mac, and figured imail would serve me. Small as it is, this unreliable junk filter may force me to switch again. I hate that.

  • How to set up junk mail filtering in mac mail

    Is there a new way to set up junk mail filtering? I have been getting an increased amount of junk mail which the filter seems to allow through. Also, when I select emails and mark them as junk, when I delete them, they "reappear" still marked as junk. Really weird. But I will have to delete them several times for them to disappear out of my IN box. Not sure if this is due to a string of them coming in at once.
    any advice out there?

    You may find these articles from Apple support  helpful.
    https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19190?locale=en_US
    https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19115?locale=en_US

  • Turning on "Junk Mail Filtering" Crashes Mail when using GMAIL IMAP

    So I thought I had my Gmail IMAP satisfactorily set up through Mail, then I turned on Junk Mail filtering through preferences. Immedaitely Gmail stopped synchronizing (I still can't get it to sync) and Mail starts hanging on basic tasks and will not quit properly. In fact, I have had to "Force Quit" the application ever since changing this status.
    Anyone else having this issue?

    I have now confirmed that when I turn Junk Mail filtering off via preferences, Gmail will start syncing again and the application will quit properly.

  • Junk Mail only works after I disable and reenable Junk Mail Filtering

    Since installing Tiger, junk mail filtering does not work automatically. It neither marks incoming messages as junk nor moves them to the Junk folder.
    I am able to get it to work by selecting Preferences > Junk Mail and then unchecking "Enable junk mail filtering" and then checking it. Mail then asks to "Move Junk Messages" and when I respond "Yes" it marks the appropriate messages as Junk and moves them to the Junk folder.
    Unfortunately, it only works for the messages already received. New mail that is "junk" is not marked as such and appears in my inbox and I have to repeat the manual process to get it removed.
    Any suggestions for a more permanent solution?
    17 iMac   Mac OS X (10.4)  

    Will it also forget the "learned" junk mail? (That took years to learn.)
    No.
    The MessageRules.plist file stores all Mail.app rules including the default Junk Mail rules.
    All Junk Mail "learned" settings are stored in the LSMMap2 file also located at the first level within the Mail folder.
    Since the LSMMap2 file can become corrupt as with any other file, this file should be included with a regular backup of the Mail folder and the Mail.app preference file at Home > Library Preferences > com.apple.mail.plist.
    All Mail.app account information is stored in the Mail.app preference file.
    If you experience any problems with the Junk Mail filter, your options are using the Junk Mail reset feature which resets all "learned" settings or replace the existing LSMMap2 file with a copy of a working backup copy with the Mail.app quit before doing so.
    If the Mail.app preference file becomes corrupt (which I've never experienced but others have), when targeting the preference file requires re-entering all email account information. If you have a working backup copy of the com.apple.mail.plist file, you can replace the existing with the Mail.app quit before doing so without having to re-enter all email account information again.
    You need to replace an existing backup copy of the Mail.app preference file only after making any changes to account information or when adding or deleting an account in Mail.
    You may already have a backup strategy but if not, it is very important since it isn't a matter of if but when your hard drive has a partial or complete failure. I learned my lesson the hard way about 5 years ago. Without warning, I experienced a complete hard drive failure. I didn't maintain a backup at the time and none of the existing data was recoverable.

  • Mail doesn't keep junk mail filtering and rules

    I noticed that all over sudden whenever I close mail the rules and junk mail setting in mails prefs are not kept anymore so that
    I have to enable each rule and junk mail filtering whenever I open mail again.
    Used to work fine.
    Any idea / remedy ?

    Open Disk Utility and Repair disk permissions on the First Aid tab.
    Then, Restart and boot into Recovery Mode by holding down cmd-r on restart until you see a gray screen. When the Mac boots, you will be presented with some options. Choose Disk Utility and select your Hard drive volume (Macintosh HD is the default name). Then, on the First Aid tab, click Repair Disk (not permissions).
    If that doesn't help, you could try installing the 10.8.2 combo updater from the Apple Downloads site:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1581

  • Junk Mail Filtering????

    This isn't working on iPhone 6 or MBA. Software updates have been informed on both devices.
    Am I correct in saying that you have designate the mail as junk on my MBA and then that filters throught to the iPhone?
    Many thanks

    Hi wyliss,
    If you are having an issue with junk mail not being removed properly, I would suggest that you troubleshoot using the steps in this article - 
    Mail (Yosemite): If junk mail filters aren’t working correctly
    Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
    Best,
    Brett L 

  • Junk mail filtering under Lion

    I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion on day 1 ... since then junk filtering no longer works.
    I've reset the filtering twice now, with no change in behavior. (rebooting after resting both times)
    Mail set to mark as junk and move to junk mailbox... neither happens until I manually mark it as junk.
    Mail is set to mark as junks and leave in inbox ... nothing happens in the Inbox, even when I mark it as junk... i.e. message color is not changed, even though selecting the message shows "marked as junk" in the message window.
    And yes, I get a TON of spam... most of it in Cyrlic or Asian character sets.
    A lot of my mail is forwarded from my .mac and Google accounts where IT IS CORRECTLY tagged as junk... only on my iMac is it not tagged.

    I am having the same problem.  Under Snow Leopard Mac junk mail filtering worked like a charm.  Now it's just like Outlook Express - nonexistent.
    Has anyone found any solution?
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  • Junk mail filtering service is blocking the server activities

    Very dears all,
    I am a young ADC Selected Membership (while I am mature as person, with my 54 years old!) and I am used to run the new release as soon I have it available for download. This I did also for 10.5.7 (while I am now ready to start the Snow testing) but after a while I had a strange loose of reaction of the server every 8 minutes.
    I checked that the problem come from junk mail filtering service so that when I activate it the server activities are blocked once every 7..8 minutes (the server is unresponsive).
    I checked that the amavis.log is full of messages in every slice of time (about 50 messages for each slice). Moreover, the slice are every tenth of a second!
    I have not found clear indication neither on "AppleMacOsX_Command_Line_Adminv10.5" nor on "MailService_Admin_v10.5_2ndEd".
    How to check for the cause of the blocking?
    Many thanks,
    Carmine

    Very dear pterobyte,
    I am not sure but the server should have been started on Leopard! Is is there a way to check it?
    Consider that the junkmail filter has been working OK before it was upgraded to the latest releases for 1.5.7 (let's say before the mid of April). It was progressively shorting both the unresponsive duration and the cycling between unresponsive. So that yesterday I had to switch off the junkmail filtering, after I detected it was the cause.
    I have now restarted the junkmail filter and here You can see the related answer to the command You asked me (first line is when it was off, then one line every 5 seconds, till answer is repeated):
    server:~ root# ps U _amavisd
    PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
    server:~ root# ps U _amavisd
    PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
    77287 ?? Ss 0:00.92 /usr/bin/perl -T /usr/bin/amavisd foreground
    77293 ?? Ss 0:02.89 clamd
    server:~ root# ps U _amavisd
    PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
    77287 ?? Us 0:01.35 amavisd (master)
    77293 ?? Ss 0:02.89 clamd
    server:~ root# ps U _amavisd
    PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
    77287 ?? Ss 0:02.52 amavisd (master)
    77293 ?? Ss 0:02.89 clamd
    77485 ?? S 0:00.02 amavisd (virgin child)
    77486 ?? S 0:00.02 amavisd (virgin child)
    server:~ root# ps U _amavisd
    PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
    77287 ?? Ss 0:02.52 amavisd (master)
    77293 ?? Ss 0:02.89 clamd
    77485 ?? R 0:02.88 amavisd (ch1-77485-01)
    77486 ?? S 0:00.02 amavisd (virgin child)
    77495 ?? Ss 0:00.01 /sbin/launchd
    server:~ root# ps U _amavisd
    PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
    77287 ?? Ss 0:02.52 amavisd (master)
    77293 ?? Ss 0:02.89 clamd
    77485 ?? S 0:08.47 amavisd (ch1-avail)
    77486 ?? S 0:00.29 amavisd (ch1-avail)
    77495 ?? Ss 0:00.01 /sbin/launchd
    server:~ root# ps U _amavisd
    PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
    77287 ?? Ss 0:02.52 amavisd (master)
    77293 ?? Ss 0:02.89 clamd
    77485 ?? S 0:08.47 amavisd (ch1-avail)
    77486 ?? S 0:00.91 amavisd (ch2-avail)
    77495 ?? Ss 0:00.01 /sbin/launchd
    server:~ root#
    Thanks for Your patience,
    Carmine

  • Junk Mail Filtering wont launch - displays Unknown

    As of yesterday junk mail filtering will not launch when the mail service is running. On the Overview window it displays:
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    Outgoing SMTP : Running
    etc
    Junk Mail Filtering : Unknown
    This is Leopard Server 10.5.7 running on an Xserve G5 with 2.5GB.
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    I have tried in the Maintenance section to Reconstruct all the mailbox accounts and also Repair under the Database tab to no avail. Have also confirmed that the /var/virusmails/ directory is empty.
    Would appreciate any help on this, but am a novice so would be very grateful for quite specific instructions.
    Thanks a lot,
    Stephen

    David, Thanks a lot for your help, but unfortunately this didn't seem to do anything. Here is the results of what you suggested:
    xserve1:~ admin$ sudo chown -R amavisd:amavisd /var/amavis
    xserve1:~ admin$ ls -l /var/amavis
    total 16
    -rw-r----- 1 _amavisd _amavisd 0 5 Aug 14:11 amavisd.lock
    srwxr-x--- 1 _amavisd _amavisd 0 5 Aug 13:51 amavisd.sock
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 _amavisd _amavisd 484 19 Jan 2009 amavisd_cleanup
    drwxr-xr-x 9 _amavisd _amavisd 306 5 Aug 13:51 db
    drwxr-xr-x 126 _amavisd _amavisd 4284 5 Aug 14:11 tmp
    -rw-r--r-- 1 _amavisd _amavisd 3 27 Sep 2007 whitelist_sender
    xserve1:~ admin$ amavisd
    WARN: running under user '501' (UID=501), the config file specifies $daemonuser='amavisd' (UID=83)
    Failed to open log file /var/log/amavis.log: Permission denied at /usr/bin/amavisd line 1590.
    xserve1:~ admin$
    Thanks,
    Stephen

  • Junk mail filtering exemptions not working?

    I needed to test e-mail and sent an e-mail to myself. When the e-mail came back, it wound up in the junk folder. I checked preferences, and addresses in my address book are exempt from e-mail filtering. My e-mail address is in my address book. I reset the junk mail filtering criteria and now my e-mails arrive in my inbox. Does anyone know if the exemptions in the preferences for junk mail filtering even work?

    I was having a similar problem...after upgrading I was getting all mail in my Inbox (junk as well as ones that had rules setup to go to other folders). I tried checking "Filter Junk mail before applying my rules", but as I suspected, that just sent most everything to the Junk mailbox. Each of my rules end with "Stop evaluating rules"...I tried taking them out, and that didn't help, so I put them back in. Suddenly, now everything seems to work fine. All of the mail with rules are going to the correct folders and spam is going to the trash.
    In the Junk Tab I have checked: Perform custom actions, sender from my address book and previous are exempt, and trust headers from my ISP. In the advanced area I have if "any" selected, as well as in my address book, previous recipients, and it's junk mail. In the actions I send it to the trash, and stop evaluating rules. I hope this helps some people out there.

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