Why is this very simple Mail filter not working?!?!?!?

[Moof1904]

It's a very simple filter: if an incoming mail's sender is not in my address book, trash the email.

It's not working! Mail gets past it all the time from people who are most certainly not in my address book.

What gives?

(In the real filter there's a valid email address in the "To contains xxx" field.)

 

[MisterMe]

Your filter is doing the best it can. It is supposed to delete mail which is not sent to your email address and which is not sent by someone in your address book. As all mail that you receive is addressed to you, nothing that you receive will be deleted by your filter.

 

[Moof1904]

I guess I'm confused.

My intent here is to use my address book as a white list and reject mail to this specific address from all senders who are not in my address book.

The filter conditions I've defined (or I think I've defined) are:

1) the mail is addressed to this certain email address

and

2) The sender is NOT in my address book.


If both of those are true, delete the message.

 

[MisterMe]

I guess I'm confused.

...

Regardless of your intent, you have to actually set your filter to release your intent. You have not done so. Parse the logic of your filter settings in light of my previous post.

Fundamentally, this is is a programming issue. Rather than trying to write your filters, you might be better served by setting Mail's junk mail filter into training mode. Tell it which messages are junk and which is not until it is sufficiently accurate on its own.

 

[WildCowboy]

Your filter is doing the best it can. It is supposed to delete mail which is not sent to your email address and which is not sent by someone in your address book. As all mail that you receive is addressed to you, nothing that you receive will be deleted by your filter.

This doesn't seem correct to me. The filter is set to delete mail that is sent to his specified e-mail address (and from senders not in his Address Book).

Some questions for the OP:

1. Is your e-mail address actually in the "To" field on these messages that are getting through? A lot of spam senders put your address in the Cc or Bcc fields, so your filter won't pick those up.

2. Did you type your e-mail address correctly in the filter field? (I know...dumb question, but make sure.)

 

[atszyman]

1. Is your e-mail address actually in the "To" field on these messages that are getting through? A lot of spam senders put your address in the Cc or Bcc fields, so your filter won't pick those up.

I would guess that this is most likely the issue at hand.

I may be asking a stupid question but what is the point of filtering based on the "to:" address field?

If it got to your inbox somewhere the email got routed to your address. It was either addressed to you somewhere, or it somehow got misrouted in which case you probably don't want it anyway. You might try eliminating that filter portion and see if filtering only on the sender being in your address book works how you want.

 

[WildCowboy]

If it got to your inbox somewhere the email got routed to your address. It was either addressed to you somewhere, or it somehow got misrouted in which case you probably don't want it anyway. You might try eliminating that filter portion and see if filtering only on the sender being in your address book works how you want.

I agree. If you have multiple e-mail accounts being consolidated in Mail and you want this rule to only apply to one of those addresses, filter using the "Account" option rather than "To" option.

 

[Moof1904]

I also do not agree that my logic is incorrect.

Because I want this filter to apply to only one of many email addresses, I was using the To field as criteria. I agree that defining the filter using the account is better. I didn't realize I could do that.