The web design blog
Stop getting spam by teaching Thunderbird which emails are junk
Monday 4th February 2008
This article article explains how to teach Thunderbird what emails are spam and what emails are legitimate.
Teach Thunderbird which emails are junk
Unless you keep your email address safely under tight lock-and-key, then after a while you may find you'll start to receive unsolicited email - or in other words SPAM! Well the good news is that Thunderbird comes equipped with a very clever spam filtering feature, technically referred to as Bayesian Spam Filtering. It's a very clever system that involves mathematical calculations which result in determining if a message is spam or legitimate. Here's more information about Bayesian Spam Filtering.
So when you receive a spam email into your inbox, you let Thunderbird know that this email is junk. To do this you either select the message and choose Message > Mark > As Junk or a just select the message and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Cmd+J on a Mac). When you tell Thunderbird that a certain message is spam, what happens is this: it scans and records everything about that email message (like the subject title, the content of the message and other hidden information from the email 'headers' like, who sent it, where it came from etc.) and begins to build up a picture of what a spam email is made of, thereby 'learning' what spam is and detecting it when it arrives.
When you think you have trained Thunderbird enough you can start to send all spam emails directly to the Junk folder automatically. This should leave your inbox free from spam. Just make sure that you have a look through your Junk folder from time to time to make sure you're not missing any important emails. If you spot a message which Thunderbird has been flagged-up as spam, then you'll need to re-assign the status of this email to Not Junk (Message > Mark > As Not Junk).
Modifying Junk Mail Controls
When you've 'trained' Thunderbird sufficiently, make sure you enable the following settings:
- Move incoming messages to the Junk folder
- When messages are marked as junk move them to the Junk folder
- When displaying HTML messages marked as junk, sanitise the HTML - this cuts down on potential threats like worms and viruses
TIP: Quite often a web server will come bundled with some spam detecting software like Spam Assassin, so make sure this is also enabled: this cuts down on the amount of spam Thunderbird needs to deal with.
Related Links
Useful links to further Thunderbird resources:
Mozilla Thunderbird, Thunderbird, junk mail, stop spam, Bayesian Spam Filtering, email
posted by Blair Millen in the category: email
Comments are closed.
