Extracting junk sender addresses en masse

I need to find a quick, efficient way to blacklist many senders at the same time. I currently have 3000 junk mails in my junk folder.
I get a huge amount of spam and I would like to find an economic way to block all of them, without changing my email address.


I have a Macbook and I’m running Mountain Lion.


I have been using the Rules function but it slows my Mail app down. I have already set up about 2000 rules! In any event the Rules filter does not apply to emails received on my iPad or iPhone.

The only effective way I can see, therefore, is for me to add all junk senders’ addresses to my blocked senders list in my webmail, before it reaches my Mac Mail. It seems though, that have to open each mail one by one and add one by one to webmail blocked senders. This is a huge, time-draining exercise.

Does Apple have a way of extracting the emails of all 3000 junk senders in one or two steps? That way I can copy and paste all 3000 at once into my webmail blocked senders.

I have tried a lot of approaches but none have produced the desired result.

Genius Bar says they can’t help me. For goodness sake! This is the 21st century and this is APPLE!

Help would be much appreciated.

Charlie

This isn't really an Apple specific issue, but a webmail/SPAM issue. What is your webmail provider, if it is any of the top 3 (GMail, Yahoo, Outlook), they've been doing extensive work over the years to catch all SPAM before it reaches your inbox.

I use GMail as my mail provider and have had my account for many years and use it everywhere, which means I get a ton of SPAM and all of it ends up in the junk folder.

The beauty is that apart from teaching it about a few exceptions that get through, all of the SPAM catching is happening automatically.

So give us more details about who you are using and lets see if we can come up with ways of dealing with it..

Hi guys

I have my own domain with my own email address (charlie@<domain>.com) and my host is Streamline, in UK.

Changing my email address is out of the question.

I have been using the Mail function where I have set a spam detection level (like Razoredge, I imagine), which works OK, but that means the spam still reaches my Mac but is assigned to Junk mail folder. However I still have to go through the junk very time to make sure no legitimate mail has been caught in the filter, and of course a lot of junk still finds its' way into my Inbox.

I want to eventually stop all junk reaching my folders, so I don't have to do this (or at least reduce it to a manageable level). There HAS to be a way...

I have tried using the Rules in Mail and it works, but I get so much junk that I have already added rules for about 2000 senders one by one and they still keep coming. I usually block the domain address, i.e. remove the name and block the @xxxxxx.xxx part, but I have a serious plague of junk mail that never seems to end! Believe it or not once clicked on the wrong box and blocked all emails directed at my own address (tired and bored at 2 a.m.!).

Streamline has a box where I can add any amount of blocked senders. I want to be able to add GROUPS of sender addresses,

To use Rules I have to open very single mail and set up a rule to delete the sender's mail. I have stopped doing this, until I can find a software solution for extracting all the email addresses in the junk folder into a list which I can copy and paste to Streamline blocked senders.

I have tried Previous Recipients but still have to pore over this list to remove legitimate senders. And it's not difficult to mistakenly leave one or two on the list.

I have over 3000 spam sitting in my Junk folder waiting for a solution!

I hope I have managed to explain clearly this time…

Charlie

Thank you for explaining your situation, providing an avenue is easier when we know everything. Most people don't run their own domains and e-mail addresses of those domains anymore. I used to for a long time but stopped..

Either way, your SPAM filtering needs to first happen on the server (receiving) side through programs like SpamAssassin or other related packages. These packages are smart enough to house a very large blacklist of email addresses, domains and other smarts to scan your email and determine if they are SPAM or not. You want to use the filters within Mac Mail as a secondary functionality to the server side filtering since there might be a small subset of SPAM that will sneak past the server filtering regardless of how you configure it. Those, you want to catch locally and junk..

Assuming you are using at least the Startup Hosting package from Streamline, you have Virus and SPAM protection for email. You need to to either figure out how to set it up, or contact Streamline and have them guide you through the process since they are your provider and you're paying money for your account..

Extracting sender email addresses en masse

Hi again and thanks so much for your advice.

I did raise a ticket with tech at Streamline and I am sorry to say the "tech support" fellow kept misunderstanding and responding as if reading from a manual. He does not read attentively or understand what I wrote. I even asked if they had Skype so we could communicate directly in real time, to expedite a solution. I got no joy, the ticket is still open, but I got very frustrated after a number of unsuccessful enquiries and have given up.

However, I am 99% sure Streamline uses Spam Assassin.

I also know how to add addresses to blocked senders. Easy peasy.

What I don't know is if Apple has a means for extracting email addresses from batches of senders, simply and quickly, maybe in txt format. If I can do that, I can simply copy and paste the list weekly or monthly into the blocked senders' list, hopefully thereby vastly reducing the amount of junk that reaches my Mail, over a period of time.

Cheers

Charlie

I don't know if this will help but it has a good reputation for dealing with spam. Might be worth contacting the developers to see if it can be adapted to your needs. The last time I read anything about it, the rules were little bit faster than Mail. That was quite a while ago though.

Just my opinion, but if your webhost isn't smart or capable enough to help you setup the Virus and Spam protection that they advertise, I'd question sticking with them at all..

Secondly, the beauty of SpamAssassin is that you don't necessarily have to constantly add the addresses manually, it should handle the bulk of that work on its own..

Nothing in Mac Mail will help you get the email addresses in bulk, you'd have to do it one by one looking at the email in its original text form.

However, you are attacking the problem at the wrong end and you should really be addressing this on the server side, and if Streamline isn't willing/capable to help, there are numerous other webhosts that can help you..

This is one the MAIN reasons the good webhosts cost a little bit more than the bargain basement hosts that sell their services for $2/month. The better companies will hire people who are able to help their customers through these routine things that everyone wants to do..

I have to agree with Ashwin here: it doesn't sound like your hosting company is doing a good job.

I too have my own domain(s) and have been using email similar to yours, as in [email protected] and most spam I get is two a week, if that. I've had the main domain since late 1998 ... over the years I've added a few more - .me.uk; org.uk; .name and even .eu plus a bunch of business domains. All hosted with 1&1.co.uk and some with 1&1.com - for business across the pond...

1&1 does a pretty decent job filtering all the rubbish, so it [almost] never reaches me.

On top of that, I use a system of dedicated addresses for all my private needs, in fact I have over 100 different forwarding emails just on the main surname.co.uk domain. So hotel bookings go to hotels@ and British Gas bills go british.gas@ etc, etc. Makes it a breeze to setup rules, so all emails are sorted into their respective folders automatically, and also indirectly, to cut spam down dramatically. So, for example, if I see email from "NatWest Bank" addressed to boots@- or trains@ mysurname.co.uk I don't even have to look before deleting it. In over 15 years I only had to kill off three addresses - not a great loss

PS Boots is a kind of British Walgreens, I do not have a dedicated email for footwear lol ... honest ...

Thanks very much for your advice and thoughts guys. I will definitely investigate changing to another host. Will chat to my website designer (he recommended Streamline) and go from there.

However until I do, I will have one more stab at Streamline. I will ask them why my spam is not being filtered out. I didn't realise that good spam protection is an obligatory part of their service.