Mac Mail - Inaccurate Junk classification

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I'm using the latest version of Mail in 10.13.6 on both MBPro & iMac.

Recently I've had a problem with mail from one source being declared as junk when it is legitimate. It used to be OK but one legitimate email never arrived on the correct day but did so one day later for some reason. Ever since then it has always classified mail from that source as junk.

I have now entered the email address in Contacts - I never needed to before - but that has made no difference. I can see no way that I can tell Mail that this is OK so it's very frustrating.

Grateful for any suggestions.

Thanks.
 
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I can see no way that I can tell Mail that this is OK so it's very frustrating.


Do you not have an option to select the particular email and mark it as "Not Junk"???

If nothing else works, try setting up a new rule and set it to tag such emails as legit.

And also check or change your junk email settings.




- Patrick
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I've had that happen with Mail from time to time. In fact, it has happened a few times with email from this forum letting me know somrone has replied to a thread. Patrick's suggestion to mark it as not junk should help. There isn't a specific mark as not junk option. Move the message to the inbox and Mail should learn tocorrect the error but it may take several messages for the program to learn the difference.
 

chscag

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We really need to know who your ISP is. Mac Mail downloads mail from your ISP and if your ISP has marked it as junk, then Mac Mail will too. Go on your ISP's web mail site and do as Patrick suggested and mark it there as not junk.
 

IWT


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We really need to know who your ISP is. Mac Mail downloads mail from your ISP and if your ISP has marked it as junk, then Mac Mail will too. Go on your ISP's web mail site and do as Patrick suggested and mark it there as not junk.

May I endorse Patrick and Admin chscag's suggestion.

My ISP is British Telecom and my email account is IMAP. Consequently, as stated above, if my ISP marks something as Spam, no amount of "retraining" within Mail will persuade it to change this to a legit message.

I have to go to my ISP's website, log in, select the message and mark it "Not Spam". This may take several attempts before the ISP learns to mark it as such.

And BTW, very important, if it's an IMAP account, don't alter or move the message within Mail. If you do, you will lose the chance to mark it as "Not Spam" at ISP web level.

Ian
 
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I have to go to my ISP's website, log in, select the message and mark it "Not Spam". This may take several attempts before the ISP learns to mark it as such.


You're lucky Ian that your ISP actually allows you to change the "SPAM" tag. Not so with mine and most annoying at times.




- Patrick
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chscag

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You're lucky Ian that your ISP actually allows you to change the "SPAM" tag. Not so with mine and most annoying at times.

- Patrick
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Unfortunately not every ISP will allow you to make direct changes to their tags at the server side. Google mail (gmail) has its quirks but it does allow making changes to tags at the server. As soon as you mark something as not Spam, it will place that bit of mail in your Inbox where it can be downloaded using your mail client.

Also noteworthy is the advice above by Ian about not making any changes within Mail if you're using IMAP. I mistakenly did that some time ago and it took me quite awhile to get things back to normal. If you have only a PoP3 account you can move things around in Mail and it won't have any effect at the server side.
 
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I have never enabled Junk Mail, on any of the email clients I have ever used.
 
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Also noteworthy is the advice above by Ian about not making any changes within Mail if you're using IMAP


I basically only use POP email accounts, but I sure wish I could find an easy way to edit the false-positive SPAM tagged subject my ISP inserts, as one used to be able to do with Eudora. Mail.app won't allow it:
ie: Subject: *****SPAM***** Re…
*****SPAM***** The diet … …




- Patrick
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chscag

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I have never enabled Junk Mail, on any of the email clients I have ever used.

Most ISPs do not use the terminology "Junk Mail" but rather refer to it as Spam. Any good ISP should be filtering out Junk Mail as Spam at the server side. I have both a Google and Verizon account and both use Spam filtering which is usually effective.
 
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I have both a Google and Verizon account and both use Spam filtering which is usually effective.
I have Hotmail, gmail and iCloud email. I have also used AOL, Yahoo, Verizon, and most of the other ISP's as well.

I have had my Hotmail account since '99 or 2000, started with gmail in '05 or '06, and got my iCloud when I got my iPhone 4s in '12. I used Hotmail for everything, until I got my gmail, then I only told family and friends that email, and the Hotmail was just for newsletters and account signup. Hotmail is still being used for that, except, I am using iCloud for more and more account sign ups.

Never got too many SPAM mails. Seems more phishing than SPAM.
 
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Just to note that Mail now seems to have learned from me moving the non-junk emails to my inbox. Took it a while though.
 

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