First you have to check to see WHICH buttons for Delete & Junk you have installed. The default is the co-joined one but there are also separate ones. I replace the co-joined icon with the separate ones and then put a space between them. I also put a space between the Junk & Archive buttons.
The point is, there’s no connection ultimately between the SMTP “envelope” and the headers the sender includes in the message itself. Many mail servers remove the BCC line as a courtesy, but it’s not required. And depending on how the messages are submitted, it may indeed be harmless, even beneficial; as long as the sender takes care to include the BCC line(s) only on the copies of message(s) that are directed only to the intended recipient(s), it doesn’t actually represent a problem for the requirements of BCC (though I will always frown on it, in principle). The only lines added by a standards-compliant SMTP server (others may add others) are the “Received” trace fields, which may include the “for” clause which indicates the envelope recipient (typically only occuring at all only when there is a single recipient), and which contains the details of a message handoff from one SMTP agent to the next, and the “Return-Path” field, which gives the return address contained in the SMTP envelope sender, if any, and is guaranteed to be the only field of its kind that is inserted by the final server responsible for delivery. Other than that, classical SMTP is essentially transparent, but I fear further discussion of this would just derail things needlessly …
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I am wondering whether the core issue is with Apple’s server-side spam filtering. . . There seem to be many complaints online about the effectiveness of Apple’s filters, particularly when they prevent bona fide email from being delivered.
I have been using the privacy-oriented Runbox.com for a number of years. One thing I noticed after I switched to it is the effectiveness of its filters. Very little spam gets through; I can go days without SpamSieve sending a message to our local Junk folders.
Another plus over Apple is that customer service is 24/7 and extremely helpful. Of course, Runbox is not a free service but it isn’t expensive either. My wife and I have 4 accounts ( 2 addresses each) and the cost is $4.90/month for an annual subscription. We use our own domain.
Email spam has never really been a problem for us since we have been taking various precautions since going online in 1997. (For many years our average annual spam total was less than 10 messages.) But there came a time when the spam picked up although our experience has never been a serious distraction or time suck.
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“The tips of my index/ and middle fingers are about a 30 degree angle to the right.”
Have you tried using a stylus? I developed problems with fingertip pain a while back (too many touch screens and bad keyboards though the years?), and am also starting to find it stressful to keep any of my fingers straight for long. If your iPad can use an Apple Pencil, it’s wonderful and much more accurate and comfortable than using my fingers. There’s also the somewhat cheaper Logitech Crayon and other bluetooth styli. But even a cheap capacitive stylus is good; I use one all the time for the phone.
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For the past three weeks I’ve been trying SpamSeive based on the positive comments here. It took a little bit to install and configure but nothing the average user couldn’t manage.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t see it making much difference to my accounts. I have two primary accounts - an MS Exchange account for work and an iCloud account (with several aliases) for private use. I’d say I’m getting the same amount of spam as I do normally - despite quite thorough training.
It may be more useful on accounts which are a bit more ‘open’ but I didn’t really see the value. Of course as with all things tech, ymmv.
I do use SpamSieve, with an always-running Mac mini (in the last few years with the remote training scripts, so that I can train it from my iPhone or iPad when I am away from home.) But I use it only on the Mail accounts that already have poor spam server-side spam filtering - the ISP account that my wife and I share, a old Yahoo account, and some accounts on my own domain that don’t filter spam well. For me, it’s been a fantastic product. Our ISP email account in particular gets so much junk that it makes using it on a mobile device almost painful without spam filtering; I was using a windows mobile “smartphone” at the time, so it’s been useful to me for that purpose basically from the start. I think I have to move a message to my trainspam folder maybe once or twice a month, and it’s far more rare to have a message be marked spam that shouldn’t be.
I don’t really need it nor use it for my Gmail account or for my Fastmail account - both have great server-side spam filtering that seems to learn from me marking the occasional improperly marked message as good. And I do have an iCloud account that I don’t use often, but, again, haven’t started using spamsieve with that account.
I just upgraded to version 3 and when I was looking for my license info I found that I’d purchased my version 2 license in April 2007 - so I’ve now paid $50 for 16 years of spam filtering. For me it’s easily one of the best valued Mac apps I’ve ever purchased.
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SpamSieve doesn’t prevent you from getting spam; rather, it automatically moves it to the Junk mailbox. If that’s not happening for you, please contact us.
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I understand this, it was doing it fine, and my wording probably described it badly.
I just didn’t see much difference to the default junk mail filtering. As mentioned earlier, I believe both Exchange and iCloud already have pretty strong filtering and we’ve customised our Exchange spam settings to eliminate a lot of cruft.
I’m sure it’s very useful for many folk.
Fair enough. For whatever reason, people seem to have wildly varying experiences with popular mail providers like iCloud and Gmail. For some, they catch lots of spam; for others, almost nothing. Some people find that the biggest problem is good messages that they mistakenly move to Junk, and SpamSieve can also help in that case by rescuing the good messages back the inbox.
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Yup, this is me. The problem is iCloud’s over-aggressive filtering, which SpamSieve can undo to a certain extent (along with SaneBox’s “@SaneNotSpam” feature). Glad the checking of non-inbox mailboxes is now a primary feature of SpamSieve 3.
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The ‘good’ email going into the spam folder is a problem for me. Comcast/Xfinity is my ISP. I swear it takes just 1 second for them to designate an email as Spam and you can’t “un spam” it!
I have been getting lots of USPS and Costco spam emails. So I usually go down the list of my emails and designate the ones I think are spam and hit the spam button. Well, last week the USPS Informed Delivery got sent to spam and the emails from them stopped. I figured easy fix —delete the App and sign up again. Nope —my email address is still “bad” I have spent hours trying to find someone to talk to and came across a USPS HELP email address. I explained what happened with the USPS Informed Delivery. Their answer was to mark it as NOT Spam and I would be fine. Nope. I explained that my email address must be on same USPS spam list and it needs to be moved. Their answer was Comcast is the problem and to contact them.
So I also inadvertently sent a Costco email to spam. When was at the Costco store, the Customer Service rep said I had “opted out” of spam email and he opted me back in. Fixed? Nope! Can’t find a Costco help number to talk to someone.
Does anyone know if Comcast can indeed “un-spam” an email? Or any suggestions on how I get emails from USPS Informed Delivery and Costco back?
In my company’s CRM system, once labeled as bounced, we have to delete the CRM entry and start all over. It is easier to use another email address that hasn’t be bounced back as spam.
What program are you using to hit the spam button? Are you using Apple Mail? Are you accessing Comcast’s webmail page using a browser? Something else?
@josehill I use a Comcast email App on my iPad. It has a Spam button. I select what goes into that folder, other than a few filter rules. (The rules are for certain prolific spam email addresses …)
@MaltbyEarl I don’t have another email address, just the Comcast one. Your point about deleting my email and starting over is what I was trying to convey to the USPS “help” person.
(What does CRM stand for?)
Depending on the sender and the relationship between them and Comcast, marking as spam is basically synomymous with a bounce. It’s actually a complaint that Comcast sends through the “Feedback Loop” to the sender, who then reacts to the report by doing something suitably drastic, like unsubscribing you and/or blacklisting your email address. Basically you should think of that mark spam button as equivalent to “intentionally cause this message to fail delivery”. It should be clear why you’re having trouble getting your email now.
I don’t like feedback loops. They’re nothing but trouble. If you want to report abuse, please do it properly, either manually or with help from the likes of Spamcop, but not automatically using an all-too-easy interface in a mailbox provider’s app. (Google, it will be noted, provides feedback only to those who ask for it by using their Postmaster Tools service; they don’t send reports.)
Right, it sounds to me as if the Comcast app is also possibly sending an unsubscribe (if there is one in the email) to the sender if you mark as spam.
I’d consider switching to the stock Apple Mail app for email with this account. (Though I suppose marking as spam accidentally may do the same thing with the Comcast email account on the server-side, but marking a message as spam with the stock Mail app is not something you would do accidentally.)
As for another email address, you can get a free gmail account from google with not much effort if nothing else changes.
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CRM stands for Customer Records Management. It is where my company keeps our 30k email address of people who want to hear from us. If an “unsubscribe” or “bounced as spam” event happens, it locks that email address so we can’t send to it ever again for that contact.
Also, it wasn’t delete the email, it is deleting the entire contact record in their CRM. All you history with the company gone. Hard call.
@Sebby Maybe I am not being clear. 95% off the time, I know what i am designating as spam —- and it IS spam. Most of it comes from people who have bought spam lists. Today alone, I received 7 emails with the subject “iCloud Alert” or close to that. Each of those 7 emails had a different sender.
I don’t intentionally put “good” email in the spam folder. Sometimes it is difficult to tell if the email is legitimate or spam. When that is the case, I just put it in trash. I have OsteoArhrits and crooked fingers. .Also the Trash and Spam buttons are close together. So inadvertently, good email finds it way into spam.
My problem still exists —- getting USPS Informed Delivery to re-instate my email. You write a very good description on what happens to email marked as spam. With your permission, I am going to copy it and send to the USPS help.
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@ddmiller Apple mail doesn’t play on some of the computers I use. Comcast works on all of them, my iPad and iPhone.