Junk mail problems

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I am encountering an increasing problem with mail being marked as junk. Most recently almost all my mail from well known senders is being identified as junk, even family members and mail from myself. I have checked mail preferences for Junk and the following are checked:

Enable junk mail filtering
Mark as junk but leave in the in box
Exempt Sender in address book, previous recipients, and addressed using my full name

Not checked are Trust junk mail set by ISP and Filter before applying my rules

In checking the mail at my account sbcglobal.net none of the "Junk" mails are flagged as junk, only in Mac Mail

Suggestions please

poppi
 

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Hi poppi

Nice to hear from you again.

When things like this happen, I have a basic, (simplistic if you like), starting point.

I hit "reset" and start over again. In fact, I would probably reset and then reboot the Mac.

Couple of other points:

1. Have you set up any rules at all? I ask because there could be a conflict whereby the rules do "something" which negates the Junk filter. I have always had " Filter Junk before applying my rules" checked.

2. I presume that you have been "training" Junk by repeatedly marking these emails as "not Junk"?

Please post back.

Ian
 
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Hi poppi

Nice to hear from you again.

When things like this happen, I have a basic, (simplistic if you like), starting point.

I hit "reset" and start over again. In fact, I would probably reset and then reboot the Mac.

Couple of other points:

1. Have you set up any rules at all? I ask because there could be a conflict whereby the rules do "something" which negates the Junk filter. I have always had " Filter Junk before applying my rules" checked.

2. I presume that you have been "training" Junk by repeatedly marking these emails as "not Junk"?

Please post back.

Ian

Hi Ian

Thanks for the quick reply.

No I have no rules set up.

Yes, "Filter junk before applying my rules" is checked

Yes I have always click "Not junk" when a good message is marked Junk.

I just clicked reset and rebooted then sent an e mail from me to me and it came through marked as Junk

I went many years with this same setup with no problems but it is now consistent. I also have a problem (different thread) with Mail always asking for my password. In talking with Mac support (who were unable to help m) she speculated that my many problems MIGHT be caused by my rather old O/S (10.6.8). I know the upgrade to 10.11 is free but the last time I tried an upgrade it rendered my ancient Microsoft Office and Photoshop Elements programs incompatible. If I do try an upgrade I would need to purchase at least those two softwares with no guarantee that 10.11 would solve my problems. What is your opinion

Thank you

poppi
 

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Hello again poppi.

I have followed your previous threads so perhaps I should have known that your OS was Snow Leopard-10.6.8. It didn't register with me.

Although almost everyone on the planet would advise you to upgrade - and I'm kind of that view - what you describe shouldn't happen no matter what OS you have.

So if we leave the thorny issue of out-of-date OS, let's see if there is a solution. You said that "most recently " this problem had started; can you recall when? Has anything changed on your Mac? Any new software or any other additions?

I have a belief, not necessarily based on reason or science, that upgrading with a known problem rarely solves that problem unless it is directly related to incompatibilities between apps and the OS or between an OS and an iOS.

It seems you did try an upgrade before from you say. You will know, I'm sure, that there are new versions of Office and Elements that work with even the latest OS, Sierra - but you do have to pay for them.

In addition to that cost, I'm almost certain that to upgrade, you will have to purchase Lion from the Apple online store, download it and install and then get the free upgrades from there. But as you say you have upgraded before, that might not be necessary.

So my "opinion " as you asked for it - let's say it was me - I'd get the latest OS compatible with your Mac and do a clean install. That is erasing your HD and freshly installing the new OS; but to do this , a robust and verifiable backup is essential.

What say you.

Ian
 
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Hello again poppi.

I have followed your previous threads so perhaps I should have known that your OS was Snow Leopard-10.6.8. It didn't register with me.

Although almost everyone on the planet would advise you to upgrade - and I'm kind of that view - what you describe shouldn't happen no matter what OS you have.

So if we leave the thorny issue of out-of-date OS, let's see if there is a solution. You said that "most recently " this problem had started; can you recall when? Has anything changed on your Mac? Any new software or any other additions?

I have a belief, not necessarily based on reason or science, that upgrading with a known problem rarely solves that problem unless it is directly related to incompatibilities between apps and the OS or between an OS and an iOS.

It seems you did try an upgrade before from you say. You will know, I'm sure, that there are new versions of Office and Elements that work with even the latest OS, Sierra - but you do have to pay for them.

In addition to that cost, I'm almost certain that to upgrade, you will have to purchase Lion from the Apple online store, download it and install and then get the free upgrades from there. But as you say you have upgraded before, that might not be necessary.

So my "opinion " as you asked for it - let's say it was me - I'd get the latest OS compatible with your Mac and do a clean install. That is erasing your HD and freshly installing the new OS; but to do this , a robust and verifiable backup is essential.

What say you.

Ian

Ian

This is the link Apple sent me. Following it through it appears that the upgrade to El Capitan is free. They then recommend upgrading first to El Capitan and then to Sierra (don't know if that is also free). I need to determine what other upgrades I would need to make (Office and Elements) and the costs of those. Even then I am not optimistic that would solve my various problems.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886

As far as your other questions I will need to get back to you on that.

By the way, my wife also has an iMac on 10.6.8 and she has the asking for password problem but not (so far) the kernel panic shut down problem. The differences between the two setups are that I have two EHDs, one for Time Machine and one for iPhoto and iMovie storage. I have considered disconnecting them to see if the problems continue. What do you think"

Also by the way my iMac is practically brand new as the Apple store replaced almost every component a year ago in a ridiculous effort to solve a minor problem (fortunately they did not charge me for the $1100 repair) so I doubt it is a problem with the iMac hardware.

Thanks again for all your help

poppi
 
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Even then I am not optimistic that would solve my various problems.


I would concur and dare say that I'd be very surprised if any Mac OS X upgrade would improve things and no doubt increase any existing problems.

What I would suggest is some maintenance by doing a shutdown, wait a minute and then startup, but use Safe Boot Mode. Press and hold down the shift key, but only when you hear the boot chime and keep holding at least until you see the spinning grey gear.

Login when asked and then open Disk Utility and do a permission Repair and a Drive Verify.

This will purge a lot of junk among other things and hopefully may even fix some problems.






- Patrick
======

Then shutdown and then boot normally.
 
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I would concur and dare say that I'd be very surprised if any Mac OS X upgrade would improve things and no doubt increase any existing problems.

What I would suggest is some maintenance by doing a shutdown, wait a minute and then startup, but use Safe Boot Mode. Press and hold down the shift key, but only when you hear the boot chime and keep holding at least until you see the spinning grey gear.

Login when asked and then open Disk Utility and do a permission Repair and a Drive Verify.

This will purge a lot of junk among other things and hopefully may even fix some problems.






- Patrick
======

Then shutdown and then boot normally.

Thank you Patrick

Did as you suggested. Permissions repair took 26 minutes and disk verify said the hard drive was OK. Will see what happens now

poppi
 
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Sorry to be a dunce but how do I reboot my mail? Just quit and then reopen?

poppi


I'm not sure what Nearbuds means either, but I'm guessing that you're correct with your guess.

Also, if you still have there problem and haven't done so already, I'd do a web search and read some of the hits and suggestions, i.e.:
'mac mail junk mail not working':
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=tQHDWNPdOezs8weh3IvACA

The various OS X versions shouldn't change things very much. and you may want to go and read this first from the mothership:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH22334?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US



EDIT:
As a PS: If nothing seems to fix your email SPAM problem, I'd suggest giving SpamSieve a try:
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/9116/spamsieve (or maybe one of the alternate suggestions, but I can't recommend any)
or as most suggest, direct from the developer's page:
http://spamassassin.apache.org

EDIT: Opps, that's another app, SpamSieve seems to be only available at the macupdate site.

This used to be an excellent app and I used to use it very successfully with Eudora back in the PPC Mac days.

PPS: I'm assuming the safe boot and permission repaid didn't fix anything.

I'd also suggest going over ALL your Mail rules and filters VERY thoroughly. Yes again. ;)

PPPS: Does your ISP's webmail page have SPAM filtering options available you could setup enable and use???

And more choices here:
How to Set Junk Mail Settings in SBCglobal.net Mail
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/set-junk-mail-settings-sbcglobalnet-mail-73780.html
or just head off to:
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=BgrDWLyBCeXe8AfVla-QCw







- Patrick
======
 
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UPDATE TO THE JUNK MAIL ISSUE

Tried some experiments

1) sent an email from me to me from my iPhone
* Arrived on Mac marked as junk
* Arrived normally on iPhone
* Arrived normally on my email account at ISP ATT>NET

2) sent an email from me to me from my ATT mail account
* Arrived on Mac marked as junk
* Arrived normally on iPhone
* Arrived normally on my email account at ISP ATT>NET

3) sent an email from me to me from my Mac Mail on my iMac
* Arrived on Mac marked as junk
* Arrived normally on iPhone
* Arrived normally on my email account at ISP ATT>NET

SO - it appears that no matter the source the emails are not JUNK to the ISP or iPhone but are JUNK when received in Mac Mail. I have checked the Mail junk preferences several times and they are all set correctly but it appears the JUNK issue has something to do with Mac Mail.

Another note - the majority of mails marked junk are from family members (including me, my wife, and two of my daughters) but some other family members come through with no junk marking. I rarely receive other junk because it is filtered out at the ISP level as SPAM.

Suggestions will be appreciated

poppi

UPDATE:

In searching the forum I came up with a "brilliant" thought. Turn off the filter. did so and two tests came through not marked as junk.
 
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Is there any registry for email as there is for mail that lists your email address as not to receive any spam? My spam mail inundated with horrors.
 
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Is there any registry for email as there is for mail that lists your email address as not to receive any spam? My spam mail inundated with horrors.



Even if there was, I doubt it would be very effective.

Best thing I'd advise is utilizing any SPAM filtering your ISP's can offer and also learn how to use the SPAM/Junk filter in whatever email client you might be using.

Mail.app for example has its own "junk mail" extra options that you can also use if you're using it for your email.

Mail's Help has some associated help to help set it up.





- Patrick
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Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but this is a problem that has plagued me for years. Apple Mail's junk filtering seems to be completely unpredictable.

Here's an example: I am a long-time (7 years?) subscriber to Subsurface Dive Log on Google Groups. The group dispatches a daily email summary of threads on the group. A few days ago Apple Mail suddenly started flagging this daily email as junk:

subsurface.jpg
As you can see, the sender of this message is in my Contacts. I have checked the headers in this message and there is nothing to indicate that anywhere along the way it was marked as being sam.

Here's my current Junk Mail setup:

junk_rules.jpg

I have tried various combinations of these settings with little success.

I have tried resetting Junk Mail countless times. Sometimes it works for a while; sometimes not.

To get around this I have written rules to move mail from specific senders from the Junk Mailbox to my Inbox. This doesn't actually work.

Mail that is regularly marked as junk includes messages from the ACLU, Red Cross, Lazada (an online retailer that I use often) and Google Calendar alerts.

I should note that Mail does a pretty good job of identifying real Spam but I find the many false positives to be both baffling and annoying.
 
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Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but this is a problem that has plagued me for years. Apple Mail's junk filtering seems to be completely unpredictable.

Here's an example: I am a long-time (7 years?) subscriber to Subsurface Dive Log on Google Groups. The group dispatches a daily email summary of threads on the group. A few days ago Apple Mail suddenly started flagging this daily email as junk:

View attachment 30588
As you can see, the sender of this message is in my Contacts. I have checked the headers in this message and there is nothing to indicate that anywhere along the way it was marked as being sam.

Here's my current Junk Mail setup:

View attachment 30589

I have tried various combinations of these settings with little success.

I have tried resetting Junk Mail countless times. Sometimes it works for a while; sometimes not.

To get around this I have written rules to move mail from specific senders from the Junk Mailbox to my Inbox. This doesn't actually work.

Mail that is regularly marked as junk includes messages from the ACLU, Red Cross, Lazada (an online retailer that I use often) and Google Calendar alerts.

I should note that Mail does a pretty good job of identifying real Spam but I find the many false positives to be both baffling and annoying.
If you turn off Apple Mail Junk Mail feature, does your email provider put it in Junk Mail? I never use it from the app.
 
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If you turn off Apple Mail Junk Mail feature, does your email provider put it in Junk Mail? I never use it from the app.

I don't know. I've turned it off. We'll see what happens after a few days.
 

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Maybe this has changed but I seem to remember that if you opened something marked as Junk either from the Junk Mailbox or by searching for it you had the option to mark it as Not Junk. There used to be a little dialogue that said something like, "Mail thinks this is junk mail", and you had the option to change that. After that mail from the same sender would go into the Inbox I thought. I could be wrong though as I use Spam Sieve so I can just "Train as good".


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Rod, that Not Junk button is there in the latest version of Mail when the message is marked as Junk but left in the Inbox. If it is moved to Junk, the button disappears. At least that's how it seems to work.
 

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Maybe this has changed but I seem to remember that if you opened something marked as Junk either from the Junk Mailbox or by searching for it you had the option to mark it as Not Junk. There used to be a little dialogue that said something like, "Mail thinks this is junk mail", and you had the option to change that. After that mail from the same sender would go into the Inbox I thought. I could be wrong though as I use Spam Sieve so I can just "Train as good".


Sent from my iPhone using Mac-Forums

Rod, not only are you correct, as Jake pointed out; but having SpamSieve does not stop Mail from assuming something is Junk and putting this into Mail's Junk folder.

SpamSieve explains this in their detailed blog about the product. SpamSieve does a great job and I love it; but it can't stop the occasional email going into Mail's Junk - even though I have disabled this in Mail preferences.

SpamSieve says that if this happens delete or accept the item at the Mail level and do not move it to SpamSieve or alter SpamSieve's settings. In my case, it's my ISP deciding ahead of SpamSieve that it's junk.

Ian
 
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A few days ago Apple Mail suddenly started flagging this daily email as junk:


Does not your Mail.app give you an option to tag such e-mails as Not Junk??? I would think that would be part of the training method.


- Patrick
======
 
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Does not your Mail.app give you an option to tag such e-mails as Not Junk??? I would think that would be part of the training method.

Yes it does as described in the posts above. But, it doesn't seem to work. Whenever real mail ends up in my Junk mailbox I always click on Not Junk. But, that training doesn't seem to work. I have been clicking Not Junk on mail from the online retailer Lazada for years, but mail from them still ends up in the Junk mailbox.
 

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