Thunderbird and Junk / Spam Messages
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- Revision id: 57378
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- Creator: Dyvik Chenna
- Comment: Share this article added
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- Reviewed by: MattAuSupport
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- Readied for localization by: MattAuSupport
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To deal with the large amount of unsolicited email ("spam" or "junk mail") that most people have to cope with, Thunderbird uses an adaptive filter that learns from your actions which messages are legitimate and which are junk.
Table of Contents
Junk filter options
General settings
The filter is enabled by default. You can set system-wide preferences that determine what happens to messages marked as junk. These settings will be used by all your email accounts (although some settings can be overridden in the account settings, as shown below). To access the preferences, click
, select the panel and then select the tab.
Per account settings
The configuration in the account preferences for each of your email accounts will override similar settings in the preferences described above. Click
and select in the left pane for the account to see these settings.
Training the junk filter
Tell Thunderbird what is junk
In order for this filter to be effective, you must train it to recognize the messages that you consider to be junk. To train the filter, simply mark messages as junk.
You can mark messages as junk in the message list by clicking in the "junk" column in the message list:
You can also mark messages as junk in the message pane by clicking the
button on the message header:
As you mark messages, Thunderbird learns the characteristics of your junk mail and can start automatically classifying messages.
Tell Thunderbird what is NOT junk
During the early learning stages, it is a good idea to look at the messages that have been classified as junk and un-flag any that have been incorrectly classified by clicking on the
button.