Filtering Junk Mail

You can filter junk mail in the Apple Mail app, but you should first try to prevent spam email from even getting past your server. If you use a good transportable email address, like Gmail, you'll get most of your junk mail filtered out before it gets to your Mac. Apple Mail can act as a last line of defense if you set up junk mail filtering in the preferences. You can also add your own filters for reoccurring spam email in Gmail and in Apple Mail. If you no longer want to receive mail from a company you have done business with or have subscribed to, be sure to use their Unsubscribe button instead of reporting the email as junk.

Comments: 10 Responses to “Filtering Junk Mail”

    Alex
    10 years ago

    You should only click 'Unsubscribe' when you sure it's legitimate.

    We once experimented with the 'Unsubscribe'-'feature' of spam mails and got redirected to a page where we had to enter the email-address to unsubscribe.
    Instead we entered a newly created one just for testing and - you might have guessed it - it got immediately hammered from lots of different spammers...

      jasper robinson
      10 years ago

      Yes, if it's unsolicited there's a really good chance it's a spammer who's just bundled a list of names onto gmail.com, etc and hit send. Once they know you're real, you're in trouble :-/ Also uncheck "Load remote content from messages" in Preferences → View. I believe that the download can signal to the sender that it's been opened and, again, the unsolicited spammer know's you're real.

    Joe Sandusky
    10 years ago

    The Thumbs up does NOT work. On any e-mail that lands in my Junk Mailbox that is not junk I have not been able to change the rules for this e-mail. I have tired to mark as junk (even though it is already in the junk mailbox) and then reverse it by giving it a thumbs up and that just will not work. How do we get mail to recognize e-mails that are NOT junk and stop making them as junk?

    Thank you

    Joe

      Crystal
      10 years ago

      same issue here. happens w/ my mail/gmail. thumbs up 'not junk', drag it out of junk into inbox to see if the 'next' time it will go where it should. done this many times, so i've lost track if it still works or not :) any definite tweaks would be great.

        Joe Sandusky
        10 years ago

        Crystal: I have tried this numerous times and it just does not work?

    Al
    10 years ago

    Hi Gary. Thanks for another informative podcast. I have an email that keeps going to the junk, but shouldn't. Your video shows a 'thumbs up' logo to tell Mail it's not junk. How do you get that button to appear please? For me, when the junk box is selected, it still shows a 'thumbs down' as if to confirm it is junk. I've looked in the 'customise toolbar', but I can't see a 'thumbs up' anywhere!
    Have a great Christmas, and thanks again for all the info you've shared throughout this year. Al

      Al
      10 years ago

      Edit: Ok got it now, you have to click the thumbs down to get the thumbs up it seems!

    John Carter
    10 years ago

    Gary, you missed an important feature of the Mail->Preferences->Junk Mail for configuring junk mail. That's the button for "Configuring custom actions" in combination with the Advanced button. But even with all that, lots of junk mail still shows up in my inbox, and no matter how many times I click on "Unsubscribe" it keeps coming back. Another thing to do frequently is to clean out the "Previous Recipients" list in Mail so that the junk mail filter will do the right thing.

    Shirley Allan
    10 years ago

    I also Uncheck “Message is addressed using my full name” and haven’t gotten junk or spam in years. I do have an Image Spam rule set up that says if the Content-Type contains multipart/related, the Sender is not in my contacts or in my previous recipients send it to junk but I check junk too.

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