Email and Spam

[Pyrotechnic]

As I do not yet own a Mac, I am intrigued by the Apple Store Assistants comments that the Email client can be put into some sort of learning mode and will learn to filter spam out.

Is there any guides on how this works and how well does it actually work ?

 

[MisterMe]

As I do not yet own a Mac, I am intrigued by the Apple Store Assistants comments that the Email client can be put into some sort of learning mode and will learn to filter spam out.

Is there any guides on how this works and how well does it actually work ?

Out of the box, Mail has rules that flag suspect messages as SPAM. In learning mode, those messages are colored [by default, brown] and left in the Inbox. You may manually flag the SPAM that it misses and unflag the false positives. My understanding is that this process uses artificial intelligence to train the filter. Over time, you will find that the filter will flag most or all of the real SPAM and give few if any false positives. You may then take the filter out of training mode. Your SPAM will then go to the Junk Mail folder where you may examine it later.

The beauty of the Mail Junk Mail filter is that you need never lose a message because it was a false positive. I have lost several critical messages to the junk mail filter in Entourage 2004. Because Entourage conceals messages flagged as SPAM, I never knew what I was missing. We must also understand that SPAM is a moving target. A static filter must be updated to deal with new SPAM techniques. With Mail, you merely return to training mode.

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Thanks for the reply. I currently use outlook which seems to do the job well and updates it filter direct as an update from M$ every now and again.

 

[Black Box]

I've used Outlook, Entourage, Thunderbird and others for email. I have to say when it comes to junk mail filtering I'm most impressed with Apple's Mail application.

I set up a junk mail folder in my mailbox where all suspected spam goes and have it set up so messages older than a week are deleted. This gives me the chance to review whats in the folder for that rare situation where legit messages are marked as junk by accident. Simply mark any false positives as "not junk" and Mail remembers to do the right thing going forward...brilliant in its simplicity.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Apple Mail no longer has a "learning mode" for junk mail filtering. You turn on the filter in the application preferences, and it does what it does. What was once called "learning mode" is on all the time now. It does seem to learn, but slowly. According to Mac help:

Mail maintains an internal database of information that helps it detect junk mail. When you mark messages as junk or not junk, Mail updates the junk mail database accordingly and your junk mail filter continually improves over time. If you change your mind about what is junk mail (for example, you want to receive someone’s messages that you previously specified were junk messages), you need to mark them as not junk.

Mail continues to update its junk mail database when you mark messages as junk or not junk, regardless of whether you’re currently using the database in your filter. To reset the junk mail database to its original information, and remove everything Mail learned from you about what is junk or not junk, click Reset.