I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk by
both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to both
Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?

Ed

Ed Cryer wrote:

> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk by
> both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to both
> Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?

In TB you can set it to not mark items as spam if they're from entries
in your address book ... do the mailing list items all come "from:" a
fixed list address?

Andy Burns wrote:
> Ed Cryer wrote:
>
>> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk
>> by both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to
>> both Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
>> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?
>
> In TB you can set it to not mark items as spam if they're from entries
> in your address book ... do the mailing list items all come "from:" a
> fixed list address?
>

The name appearing in "From" varies widely; sometimes it's the domain
address, sometimes the individual poster, sometimes the name of the
group in the domain. But the "To" is always the domain.

This discrepancy of "From" might be due to me having added certain
individuals to my Contacts.

Ed

Ed Cryer wrote:
> Andy Burns wrote:
>> Ed Cryer wrote:
>>
>>> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk
>>> by both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to
>>> both Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
>>> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?
>>
>> In TB you can set it to not mark items as spam if they're from entries
>> in your address book ... do the mailing list items all come "from:" a
>> fixed list address?
>>
>
> The name appearing in "From" varies widely; sometimes it's the domain
> address, sometimes the individual poster, sometimes the name of the
> group in the domain. But the "To" is always the domain.
>
> This discrepancy of "From" might be due to me having added certain
> individuals to my Contacts.
>
> Ed
>

Under "Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account" I only had
"Personal Address Book" ticked. I've now included "Collected Addresses"
and "Personal Address Book".
I've also ticked "Trust junk mail headers set by SpamAssassin", although
I suspect this is used by both MS Outlook and btinternet, and is
probably the culprit here.

Ed

Ed Cryer wrote:

> I've also ticked "Trust junk mail headers set by SpamAssassin", although
> I suspect this is used by both MS Outlook and btinternet, and is
> probably the culprit here.

I doubt either Outlook, or BT use SpamAssassin, it did used to work when
we ran our own Postfix/Dovecote server.

On 15.03.24 11:05, Ed Cryer wrote:
> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk by
> both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to both
> Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?

That is decided on the server-side. BB junk filter/filters in general
are local.

--
"Mille viae ducunt hominem per saecula Romam." (Alanus ab Insulis 1120-1202)

Jörg Lorenz wrote:
> On 15.03.24 11:05, Ed Cryer wrote:
>> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk by
>> both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to both
>> Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
>> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?
>
> That is decided on the server-side. BB junk filter/filters in general
> are local.
>
Thanks for the confirmation.
BTW, in Latin "mille" takes the genitive case.
Mille viarum .......
I always thought the motto was "Omnes viae Romam ducunt".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_roads_lead_to_Rome
Ed

Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:

> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk by
> both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to both
> Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?

For your e-mail provider, a whitelist, like Safe Senders, is only valid
(versus just a rule) if it is exerceised before the server-side
anti-spam filters. Some treat Safe Senders nothing more than an easier
to edit user-defined filter, but those get exercised too late. If your
e-mail provider's server-side filters moved a message into Junk up
there, your local e-mail client won't find it as a new message in the
Inbox folder. Usually local e-mail clients exercise client-side filter
on just the Inbox folder.

There was someone that wrote a script that would monitor the Junk filter
for whitelisted senders to force them back into the Inbox. This was
when the e-mail client was not running, modified some of its files, and
restarted the e-mail client to reflect the change. Don't remember who.

For my e-mail provider, they have a Safe Senders whitelist in the
options of my online account, and it is exercised before the server-side
anti-spam filters are exercised, so it works as expected. Check with BT
if they do the same with server-defined Safe Senders whitelist in your
online account. The whitelist must be honored BEFORE the server-side
anti-spam filters are applied. Exercised afterward is too late.

You need to address server-side handling first. If the server moved an
item into the Junk folder, your IMAP client reflects what is on the
server, so your client shows it in the Junk folder, too.

To ensure your client isn't causing the problem (i.e., the server leaves
the message in the Inbox folder, but your client is moving to Junk),
disable junk filtering in the client to test after getting several
messages from the sender. Add the sender to the server-side Safe
Senders whitelist, disable junk filtering in your client, and see in
which folder the sender's message are dumped thereafter.

VanguardLH wrote:
> Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:
>
>> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk by
>> both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to both
>> Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
>> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?
>
> For your e-mail provider, a whitelist, like Safe Senders, is only valid
> (versus just a rule) if it is exerceised before the server-side
> anti-spam filters. Some treat Safe Senders nothing more than an easier
> to edit user-defined filter, but those get exercised too late. If your
> e-mail provider's server-side filters moved a message into Junk up
> there, your local e-mail client won't find it as a new message in the
> Inbox folder. Usually local e-mail clients exercise client-side filter
> on just the Inbox folder.
>
> There was someone that wrote a script that would monitor the Junk filter
> for whitelisted senders to force them back into the Inbox. This was
> when the e-mail client was not running, modified some of its files, and
> restarted the e-mail client to reflect the change. Don't remember who.
>
> For my e-mail provider, they have a Safe Senders whitelist in the
> options of my online account, and it is exercised before the server-side
> anti-spam filters are exercised, so it works as expected. Check with BT
> if they do the same with server-defined Safe Senders whitelist in your
> online account. The whitelist must be honored BEFORE the server-side
> anti-spam filters are applied. Exercised afterward is too late.
>
> You need to address server-side handling first. If the server moved an
> item into the Junk folder, your IMAP client reflects what is on the
> server, so your client shows it in the Junk folder, too.
>
> To ensure your client isn't causing the problem (i.e., the server leaves
> the message in the Inbox folder, but your client is moving to Junk),
> disable junk filtering in the client to test after getting several
> messages from the sender. Add the sender to the server-side Safe
> Senders whitelist, disable junk filtering in your client, and see in
> which folder the sender's message are dumped thereafter.

Thanks for that, man. But it seems exceptionally esoteric to me, and
likely to come undone at the slightest update of many different pieces
of software in the hierarchy.

A friend of mine says "Use SpamAssassin". That's all he said, like when
you're in a pub and someone taps you on the shoulder and says "I'll get
you another at the bar".
If I install that locally, maybe it would position itself at the very
end of all those previous spam-filtering algorithms, and give me the
option to just say "Allow all mail from this domain".

Ed

Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>> Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> I subscribe to a Sympa mailing list. Posts from it are marked as Junk by
>>> both MS Outlook and btinternet. I've added the domain address to both
>>> Safe Senders lists, but they still get into the Junk folders in BB.
>>> Can I somehow mark this domain as safe in BB?
>>
>> For your e-mail provider, a whitelist, like Safe Senders, is only valid
>> (versus just a rule) if it is exerceised before the server-side
>> anti-spam filters. Some treat Safe Senders nothing more than an easier
>> to edit user-defined filter, but those get exercised too late. If your
>> e-mail provider's server-side filters moved a message into Junk up
>> there, your local e-mail client won't find it as a new message in the
>> Inbox folder. Usually local e-mail clients exercise client-side filter
>> on just the Inbox folder.
>>
>> There was someone that wrote a script that would monitor the Junk filter
>> for whitelisted senders to force them back into the Inbox. This was
>> when the e-mail client was not running, modified some of its files, and
>> restarted the e-mail client to reflect the change. Don't remember who.
>>
>> For my e-mail provider, they have a Safe Senders whitelist in the
>> options of my online account, and it is exercised before the server-side
>> anti-spam filters are exercised, so it works as expected. Check with BT
>> if they do the same with server-defined Safe Senders whitelist in your
>> online account. The whitelist must be honored BEFORE the server-side
>> anti-spam filters are applied. Exercised afterward is too late.
>>
>> You need to address server-side handling first. If the server moved an
>> item into the Junk folder, your IMAP client reflects what is on the
>> server, so your client shows it in the Junk folder, too.
>>
>> To ensure your client isn't causing the problem (i.e., the server leaves
>> the message in the Inbox folder, but your client is moving to Junk),
>> disable junk filtering in the client to test after getting several
>> messages from the sender. Add the sender to the server-side Safe
>> Senders whitelist, disable junk filtering in your client, and see in
>> which folder the sender's message are dumped thereafter.
>
> Thanks for that, man. But it seems exceptionally esoteric to me, and
> likely to come undone at the slightest update of many different pieces
> of software in the hierarchy.

Huh? You mentioned your client and your e-mail provider. Then you said
"marked as Junk by both MS Outlook and btinternet". Since you are
posting in a Thunderbird newsgroup, presumably "MS Outlook" did not mean
the local e-mail client, but Microsoft's e-mail service of outlook.com.
"Both" means your local client (Thunderbird) and your e-mail provider
(outlook.com). I use Hotmail (which Microsoft wanted to foist on their
users that outlook.com was its replacement trying to lure hotmail.com
users to migrate, but instead you can have accounts at both domains
which I do). Hotmail hence outlook.com have a Safe Senders whitelist,
and it does get exercised before Microsoft's anti-spam filters. I've
used the Safe Senders whitelist for years. It is effective at
circumventing Microsoft's anti-spam filters to ensure senders stay in
your Inbox.

If by "MS Outlook" you really did mean the local e-mail client, no Safe
Senders whitelist in a client is going to override where the server puts
your incoming messages. The client gets the messages too late. The
server has already moved the messages into Junk, and your IMAP client
reflects what is on the server. If you are only discussing local
e-mails clients, you will have to see if your *e-mail provider* has a
Safe Senders whitelist. You use their webmail client to log into your
online account, and add senders there to the whitelist. You need to
thwart the server-side anti-spam filtering with a server-side whitelist.

> A friend of mine says "Use SpamAssassin". That's all he said, like when
> you're in a pub and someone taps you on the shoulder and says "I'll get
> you another at the bar".

And that works locally in your e-mail client, and only on the Inbox.
Again, client-side filtering is too late to undo the server moving
incoming messages into the Junk folder.

Ed Cryer wrote:
>> To ensure your client isn't causing the problem (i.e., the server leaves
>> the message in the Inbox folder, but your client is moving to Junk),
>> disable junk filtering in the client to test after getting several
>> messages from the sender.  Add the sender to the server-side Safe
>> Senders whitelist, disable junk filtering in your client, and see in
>> which folder the sender's message are dumped thereafter.
>
> Thanks for that, man. But it seems exceptionally esoteric to me, and
> likely to come undone at the slightest update of many different pieces
> of software in the hierarchy.
>
> A friend of mine says "Use SpamAssassin". That's all he said, like when
> you're in a pub and someone taps you on the shoulder and says "I'll get
> you another at the bar".
> If I install that locally, maybe it would position itself at the very
> end of all those previous spam-filtering algorithms, and give me the
> option to just say "Allow all mail from this domain".

I think that a majority of servers use what's called Bayesian filters.
SpamAssassin can support that, but not all SA implementations use that.

The idea with Bayesian is that if you designate a message as Junk, then
all messages that are similar will also be considered as junk. And
designating a false-positive as Not Junk will cause future similar
messages to be also considered as Not Junk. By "similar", that' not
just the obvious header lines of either From: or Subject, but the entire
content of the message, including all header content, HTML formatting of
message body and attachments. Bayesian filters are generally quite
effective, although the rule of thumb is that they're most reliable when
they've been given at least 100 samples of both spam and ham.

For what it's worth, in one of my mailboxes, I've seen several samples
of a particular sort of spam. The visual content is mostly the same, but
the content not identical. However, the spammer's method of injection
for each message is identical. Each message has a unique gmail address
as the sender, but messages originate from TenCent hosted space in China
and are distributed via mailing list. However, since the first message
in that batch was designated junk, subsequent messages are also being
dropped into a junk folder. I'm confident that that will continue as
long as this spam campaign continues (it's common for campaigns to last
about 2 weeks), and I don't anticipate seeing any further content in
this inbox, unless the unlikely event that the spammer changes the
message template and/or uses a different distribution method, including
from different IP space.

There's probably some variance depending on provider, but it's my
impression that some Bayesian implementations rely on those filters
enough that tuned filters are enough to overcome false-positive mail
getting deposited to Junk folders as a result of improper server
implementations (as defined in DNS records) of either SPF or DKIM,
combined with DMARC.

And although some servers do allow for users whitelisting sender email
addresses, the use of SPF, DKIM and DMARC are becoming widespread enough
(and a lot more effective) that I consider the instructions of "include
us in your address book" to be mostly ineffective.

As VanguardLH notes, if your servers are putting stuff in junk folders,
then there's nothing that Thunderbird or any other mail client can do to
make corrections. There might be a few providers that have setups that
allow moving mail from a junk folder to your inbox to inform/update the
server's Bayesian filters, but I don't think that's common. Thus,
forget anything that you might do with Thunderbird (or BetterBird), and
focus your efforts on tuning with your provider's web-based mail access.
Make sure you use the provided capacity to correct every
false-positive and false-negative. The result is that the server-based
rules will interact with inbound mail and process as the message is
being received.

Once inbound mail is written the Inbox or other folder on a server, the
delivery process is complete, and it's only then that a mail client can
interact with the received mail. That may be useful in handling what
you actually see in Thunderbird's inbox, but it really is only
addressing the symptoms of the problem.

If you have things properly tuned at the server side, then Thunderbird
won't have any spam to interact with, except on the rare occasions when
something new comes through that the server filters don't recognize.
When that happens, go back to the web, and update the filters with a
Junk designation, and be done with that.

This is not to say that you can't do some stuff in Thunderbird or
BetterBird with filters to do spam filtering, but it's too far away from
the process of the server initially receiving the message to be
especially effective. Thunderbird's filtering system was far more
useful in the era of POP accounts and dial-up connections than with IMAP
accounts working over broadband connections.

Smith

Am 16.03.24 um 06:36 schrieb NFN Smith:
> Ed Cryer wrote:
>>> To ensure your client isn't causing the problem (i.e., the server leaves
>>> the message in the Inbox folder, but your client is moving to Junk),
>>> disable junk filtering in the client to test after getting several
>>> messages from the sender.  Add the sender to the server-side Safe
>>> Senders whitelist, disable junk filtering in your client, and see in
>>> which folder the sender's message are dumped thereafter.
>>
>> Thanks for that, man. But it seems exceptionally esoteric to me, and
>> likely to come undone at the slightest update of many different pieces
>> of software in the hierarchy.
>>
>> A friend of mine says "Use SpamAssassin". That's all he said, like when
>> you're in a pub and someone taps you on the shoulder and says "I'll get
>> you another at the bar".
>> If I install that locally, maybe it would position itself at the very
>> end of all those previous spam-filtering algorithms, and give me the
>> option to just say "Allow all mail from this domain".
>
> I think that a majority of servers use what's called Bayesian filters.
> SpamAssassin can support that, but not all SA implementations use that.

This assertion is simply wrong. Most servers use SpamAssassin or similar
Services with scorings. Bayesian Filters are completely unsuitable for
large providers because the judgement what spam is differs from one user
to the next. Bayesian Filters are only sensible on local machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-spam_techniques

--
"Gutta cavat lapidem." (Ovid)