What Is Putting Mail Messages In Junk Folder?

Whitehill

Whitehill

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I'm using Mail 8.2 with junk mail filtering disabled. It's turned off because I use SpamSieve, which seems to be doing a decent job, sending lots of stuff to a spam folder, not the Junk container provided by Mail. But ...

Something is placing messages in that Junk thing now and then, and about 20% of them definitely should not be there. I have examined every In-box rule, including those just for SpamSeive, and not one of them references the Junk folder. But ...

When I move a message from Junk to the In-box, it stays for a few seconds and then vanishes, and reappears back in Junk. Ditto if I use SpamSeive's Mail menu item Message/Train-as-good.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to identify the culprit?
 
One more interesting item I just noticed. All the junked messages are to my iCloud account. I have three non-Apple accounts and those messages seem immune. I now have a suspect and am trying an experiment. I'll report back in a while.
 
It sounds to me as though the your false positives were flagged at the server. You might want to check your online iCloud security settings. You gave no information about the source or nature of your false positives. I note that some senders use message formats that mimic junk mail.
 
Yes, it's the server (iCloud.com) and my suspect was 3 rules I had forgotten. I created them to forward to my wife messages from 3 sources. I don't need the rules anymore, so I deleted them and, for a while yesterday, the behavior stopped, although the rules had nothing to do with the junk messages.

Today I find more messages in Junk, with the same percentage as before. For example, one is from the Kasich campaign. Apple may consider it junk, but I prefer to decide for myself. One more item. When I view the contents of Junk on-line, the messages are clearly marked junk and it offers me a Not Junk button to click. When I view them on my desktop, they are NOT marked in any way. Clicking the on-line button has the previous temporary effect - it goes to In-Box for a few seconds, then reappears in Junk.

I just looked all over iCloud and can't locate anything called security settings or any variation.
 
The iCloud server is making that decision. I have the same problem and did not find a setting in iCloud to stop it.
 
To prevent the unintended viewing of possibly objectionable messages, you might want to turn off the Reading Pane for the Junk E-mail folder. On the View tab, in the Layout group, click Reading Pane, and then click Off. This doesn’t turn off the Reading Pane for other mail folders.
 
The problem is Not viewing objectionable messages. The problem Is iCloud deciding on its own what is junk even though no rules have been set and most of the time it is not junk.
 
thungoc said:
To prevent the unintended viewing of possibly objectionable messages, you might want to turn off the Reading Pane for the Junk E-mail folder. On the View tab, in the Layout group, click Reading Pane, and then click Off. This doesn’t turn off the Reading Pane for other mail folders.
Click to expand...
You have lost me. What is the Reading Pane of any folder? What is the View tab and the Layout group therein? Are we talking about the same program? I'm using Apple Mail 8.2.
 
Whitehill said:
You have lost me. What is the Reading Pane of any folder? What is the View tab and the Layout group therein? Are we talking about the same program? I'm using Apple Mail 8.2.
Click to expand...
I am also curious what that Reading Pane might be.
Looking at both v. 9.3 Mail from El Cap, and v. 5.3 Mail from Lion. Nothing like that in Mail.

Poster is listed as from Vietnam, so hard to tell what you get from there. You may see lots of vietnam-source single-posters who disappear immediately, lots of spammers of various types. I wouldn't expect any other response from that one. :D
 
Please see the tip in point #1 on this Micro$oft page. thungoc's post was an unattributed copy. I don't know about Vietnam, but this is called plagiarism in most countries.
 
I think since iCloud servers went online Apple expects Rules to made on the Web site Mail settings and not anymore at the Mac app. I seen this coming since the iPhone was more integrated into the Mac Mail! This worries me since it looks like programmers at Apple are in the classic case of "the left hand isn't speaking with the right hand"!

IMHO it pro ply has to do with two reasons of OS X being placed on the back burner compared to the iPhone and the the iCloud mail servers are more configured to the iPhone than to OS X.
 
Guess I will throw my hat into the ring on this problem. I ended up here while trying to search for solution of messages being added to the junk folder despite turning off any and all rules pertaining to junk mail on my Mac. At least that I could find. I do not want Apple mail or iCloud servers for that matter to handle any junk mail decisions and yet messages are still being directed to icloud junk mail folder. ugh...
 
Since this began, with no other recourse, I have fallen into the habit of treating Junk as just another Inbox. But ...

I'm now seeing a new phenomenon in this situation. At the rate of about one per day, messages appear in Junk dated two to three years ago! It's bad enough that Apple thinks it's qualified to tell me what's junk. Now they're dredging up oldies to prove how bad their decisions are.
 
Who is your email provider, particularly for the junk mail.
(whitehill@who? )

Do you use more than one email provider, or have more than one account in Mail?
If so, do you get junk mail from all accounts, or typically only one mail account?
Do you ever attempt to "train" the junk mail filter by clicking the "Not Junk" button within the header of most junk emails?

How often do you rebuild your mailbox? (Open your Mail.app, choose your mailbox, then choose Rebuild from the bottom of the Mailbox menu.
Is your Inbox really large (I would think more than 5,000 items in your Inbox would be excessively large, eh?)?
A large mailbox can take a very long time (30 minutes to several hours, particularly the first time)
You can monitor the progress of the rebuild in the Activity window under the Window menu.
If you have more than one email account, you can select each account, then do the rebuild for each account in turn.
 
I have several accounts, but only one Apple account XYZ@mac.com. All the stuff arriving in the Junk folder is through that account. I can log in to iCloud and look at messages on the server. The Junk folder actually lives there and the contents is always exactly what I see via Mail.

I do not use the junk filter in Apple Mail. I use SpamSeive which operates locally on my Mac. It filters messages from all accounts and does not move anything to the offending Junk folder.

My composite Inbox has fewer than 100 messages. I'm in the habit of filing stuff daily.
 
But

You did say that you get some emails (20%?) sorted to Junk that do not belong there.
Do you mean that those emails are not junk, (but your save-able emails), or that you simply get emails that you don't expect to get sorted into Junk, because you believe that SpamSieve should be set to filter those out. Maybe you need to re-check your SpamSieve settings, or maybe contact SpamSieve support. They may have suggestions for you - or maybe some answers that are somehow unique to *@mac.com
I should note that I don't use SpamSieve, so I don't know if that is a possibility, but you may not know until you ask, eh?

If the problem is related to junk, then why not just turn on the junk mail filter in Mail, and let your Mail software sort things out.
If the ONLY items that ever end up in a Junk folder are your *@mac.com emails, then (apparently) SpamSieve ignores them anyway (or you don't know how to set SpamSieve to block junk/spam for *@mac.com - but the Mail app seems to do that just fine... )
Again, maybe support at SpamSieve will be some help...

Last thought - if you get Junk, despite your settings in Mail, then you can also go into the account settings, and change the settings (under mailbox behavior) to empty the Junk folder when it is convenient for you, maybe each day, or just to empty Junk when you Quit Mail, etc.

When did you last rebuild your mailbox? It is still a valid periodic test...
 
Delta,

We have been talking about the @mac.com junk folder. @mac (or @me) in the iCloud has a junk folder and since Mail only uses IMAP for the @mac account, the junk folder appears in Mail under iCloud. Mail (app) junk filters have no bearing on the iCloud junk folder.

It seems that @mac has decided what is junk. Our iCloud filters are off, but @mac still puts relatively good emails in it’s own Junk folder. When we use Mail, we have to check that iCloud Junk folder for our good emails that get tossed in there. There is no rhyme or reason. Each time it can be a different email. It is frustrating to have to double check that folder for important emails.

I have searched for any kind of settings to turn if off from iCloud and came up empty.
 
Ah, OK. I violated my own rule of posting before looking for previous answers in the rest of the thread :rolleyes:

How could you explain the OP getting emails that are dated 2 or 3 years ago? (post #13)
Seems unrelated to me. Maybe you have a different take on that.
 
I can’t explain the old dated emails - unless the sender had to dial back the computer’s date to install something that had an expired certificate. They just forgot to correct the date when the install was completed.

Or Apple’s servers are giving hiccups.
 
I need to give an update on this.

I was having trouble with iCloud - I kept getting messages that my computer is having trouble with iCloud and I should check iCloud preferences. Clicking on that just brought me to system Preferences>iCloud. Logging into my Apple ID showed everything okay. So ignored it.

That is until I installed the security update for my system (through the App Store). Now iCloud stopped working and Mail stopped working. I did the usual - restart, check setting of each of my email accounts. Still a no go. I did a 'tensed up not sure if I should but did it anyway’ sign out in iCloud preferences. Now it refuses to let me log in. Mail no long has my @mac account listed. I downloaded the security update from Apple’s download web site, then checked around in Apple Community for ideas. It turns out several people were having the same problems with Mail and iCloud.

What I ended up doing:
Reinstalled the security update from downloaded file.
Went to home>Library>Application Support and trashed the iCloud folder.
Went to home>Library>Preferences and trashed the com.apple.ids files.
Went to Keychain Access and trashed all the keys related to Mail.mac, mail.me, and icloud. (I also did a clean up of old files and duplicate keys, keeping only the latest dated passwords)
Restarted and then emptied the trash.
Now went to system preferences>iCloud and was able to sign in.
Open Mail, entered password for iCloud and was now connected - and all my other emails worked as well.

Checked Mail and low & behold.... iCloud no longer lists a Junk folder at the bottom of my mailboxes side bar.

I really hate it when changes are made to iCloud and it isn’t announced to users. The last time I had problems was when they decided to move to total IMAP connections for email. I am not sure exactly what the change was this time and I am not sure which action I did above corrected the issues.
All that matters - it is working smoothly.
 
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