Junk Filter Question

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 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

In article , Jeff in LA
writes:

>Oooops!
>
>Forgot to mention I'm using Eudora 6.2.4 with OS 10.4.11...

When such messages get directed to the Junk folder, have you been
identifying them as "not junk?"

Regards,
Mike
--
| Systems Specialist: CBE,MSE
Michael T. Davis (Mike) | Departmental Networking/Computing
http://www.ecr6.ohio-state.edu/~davism/ | The Ohio State University
| 197 Watts, (614) 292-6928
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

Michael T. Davis wrote:

> When such messages get directed to the Junk folder, have you been
> identifying them as "not junk?"

Somehow I'd not understood that the 'not junk'-ing of an email was
remembered for future reference... I think this will resolve my
problem.

Many thanks!
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

In article ,
Jeff in LA wrote:

> I have designated an email address to receive payment notification
> emails from paypal when ever a sale is made on a website...
>
> Unfortunately, the notifications keep getting caught in my Junk
> mailbox.
>
> I have set a filter to transfer any email from 'paypal.com' to a
> certain folder, and I have set another filter to transfer any email
> with the subject 'Notification of payment received' (which is always
> the subject header for this notices), as a back up / failsafe.
>
> Despite both filters (which have been dragged to the top of my filter
> list), these notification emails are still getting directed to my Junk
> mailbox.
>
> How can I change my filters to get these emails to be properly directed
> where I choose so that I don't run the risk of missing/losing them in
> my Junk folder?
>
> Thanks for any advice with this!
>
>
> jb

You've already adjusted the order of your rules. Next try adding a "stop
processing rules" option to those filters. Using this option, the
desired emails should land where expected and Eudora should leave them
alone. The remaining rules would still be applied against messages that
did not meet the criteria the first two filters (from paypal.com and the
specific subject line).

I don't use Eudora so don't know how or if this can be done with this
application; however since this filtering option is available in every
other email app that I've used I would be surprised if Eudora didn't
have it too.

--
Sharon F
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

In article
,
Sharon F wrote:

> In article ,
> Jeff in LA wrote:
>
> > I have designated an email address to receive payment notification
> > emails from paypal when ever a sale is made on a website...
> >
> > Unfortunately, the notifications keep getting caught in my Junk
> > mailbox.
> >
> > I have set a filter to transfer any email from 'paypal.com' to a
> > certain folder, and I have set another filter to transfer any email
> > with the subject 'Notification of payment received' (which is always
> > the subject header for this notices), as a back up / failsafe.
> >
> > Despite both filters (which have been dragged to the top of my filter
> > list), these notification emails are still getting directed to my Junk
> > mailbox.
> >
> > How can I change my filters to get these emails to be properly directed
> > where I choose so that I don't run the risk of missing/losing them in
> > my Junk folder?
> >
> > Thanks for any advice with this!
> >
> >
> > jb
>
> You've already adjusted the order of your rules. Next try adding a "stop
> processing rules" option to those filters.

I don't know about Eudora, but with Mail.app, setting a "Stop evaluating
rules" rule in any rule set prevents the automatic spam filter from
working in all of them.

Isaac
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

Sharon F wrote:

> You've already adjusted the order of your rules. Next try adding a "stop
> processing rules" option to those filters. Using this option, the
> desired emails should land where expected and Eudora should leave them
> alone. The remaining rules would still be applied against messages that
> did not meet the criteria the first two filters (from paypal.com and the
> specific subject line).
>
> I don't use Eudora so don't know how or if this can be done with this
> application; however since this filtering option is available in every
> other email app that I've used I would be surprised if Eudora didn't
> have it too.

Eudora does have the option, but the Junk filtering is done before any
other filters are checked, so the message would already have gone to the
Junk mailbox before getting to the rule telling it to stop processing.
I think the only thing OP can do is add Paypal to his address book, as
Roberta suggested.

--
Kathy - If you're reading this in your web browser from Google or
similar forum, NNTP "newsreaders" are a better way to access the
content. <http://www.aptalaska.net/~kmorgan/how-it-works.html>
Links to NNTP newsreaders at <http://www.newsreaders.com/>
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

In article ,
Jeff in LA wrote:

> Michael T. Davis wrote:
>
> > When such messages get directed to the Junk folder, have you been
> > identifying them as "not junk?"
>
> Somehow I'd not understood that the 'not junk'-ing of an email was
> remembered for future reference... I think this will resolve my
> problem.

To get maximum value from the spam filter, you need to train it. To do
this, if a message is spam but Eudora does not detect it, you need to
mark it as junk so Eudora will learn how to identify junk mail better.
Similarly, if a message appears in the Junk folder but is not junk, you
need to mark it as "not junk". Again, the spam filter will learn to
recognise that messages like that are not spam.

However, this a black-and-white distinction. Eudora's spam filter
actually operates in shades of grey - it scores messages on a scale of 1
to 100. If a message's score is greater than a certain value, it is
regarded as junk mail.

In my case, the value is 40. Anything over 40 is junk, anything under 40
is ok.

Now what if a good message comes in as 37? The spam filter has been very
close to calling this junk. In fact, over time, similar messages may end
up with scores over 40 unless you do something about it. (This I guess
is an aspect of the algorithm, that lots of almost identical messages
probably indicates spam.)

So it is worthwhile marking good messages whose score is above 10 or 20
as "not junk" so that Eudora learns that those types of messages are
really ok.

Similarly, some messages in Junk are only slightly over 40, meaning that
the spam filter had some doubts about whether they were spam. If they
really are spam, it is worth telling Eudora that they are spam so as to
remove any doubts.

In summary, what this means is:

1. Periodically open your Junk folder and mark all the messages as junk
(after checking that there are no false positives).

2. If any good e-mails have a score of 20 or more, mark them as "not
junk".

Using this method, I get pretty good results. According to Eudora's
statistics, I received 21638 messages last year. Of those, there were
390 messages (1.8%) not identified correctly as junk (ie, I had to mark
them as junk). There were 80 messages (0.3%) incorrectly identified as
junk. The total number of junk messages was 1545, or about 7% of my
messages.

(It would be interesting to know what success rate other people are
getting with the spam filter.)

Cheers

David
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

In article ,
David Morrison wrote:

> In article ,
> Jeff in LA wrote:
>
> > Michael T. Davis wrote:
> >

........
> (It would be interesting to know what success rate other people are
> getting with the spam filter.)

I am using Spamsieve with Eudora and it works pretty well.
I started working with it in September last year and it seems to be
trained well now.
Since the last 3 months, 33.300 Spams have been sorted out and just 114
were sorted out wrong and had to be trained. That means 99.7% success
rate. It should be better now after training these 114.
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

On Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:44:18 +1100, David Morrison
wrote:

>To get maximum value from the spam filter, you need to train it. To do
>this, if a message is spam but Eudora does not detect it, you need to
>mark it as junk so Eudora will learn how to identify junk mail better.
>Similarly, if a message appears in the Junk folder but is not junk, you
>need to mark it as "not junk". Again, the spam filter will learn to
>recognise that messages like that are not spam.

But many spam filters only get told "yes this is spam", or "no this
isn't spam". I want them to know why.

(Same thing with spell checkers - when I add a word to a dictionary,
I'd like to have a pop up with it guessing its part of speech along
with variations of that word such as plurals or change that word to a
phrase).
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

In article ,
isw wrote:

> I don't know about Eudora, but with Mail.app, setting a "Stop evaluating
> rules" rule in any rule set prevents the automatic spam filter from
> working in all of them.

Traditionally, "stop processing" or "stop evaluating" as Mail expresses
it - applies on a message by message basis. If Mail is doing anything
else, I would call that a bug.

I use that option in my rules and my junk filtering seems to be trucking
along as usual. I'm not saying you're wrong - just that I'm not seeing
the same thing here.

--
Sharon F
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

In article ,
kmorgan.DeleteThis@spamcop.net (Kathy Morgan) wrote:

> Eudora does have the option, but the Junk filtering is done before any
> other filters are checked, so the message would already have gone to the
> Junk mailbox before getting to the rule telling it to stop processing.
> I think the only thing OP can do is add Paypal to his address book, as
> Roberta suggested.

I agree since junk is filtered first.

--
Sharon F
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

Howard Brazee wrote:

> But many spam filters only get told "yes this is spam", or "no this
> isn't spam". I want them to know why.

The whole point of heuristic learning (which I believe the spam filters
use) is that they derive their own rules from the examples you give
them. These rules can be very complicated. This avoids human
programming, which is the source of so many errors.
--
Peter
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question 

On Fri, 8 Feb 2008 17:46:24 +0000, peter.RemoveThis@cara.demon.co.uk (Peter
Ceresole) wrote:

>> But many spam filters only get told "yes this is spam", or "no this
>> isn't spam". I want them to know why.
>
>The whole point of heuristic learning (which I believe the spam filters
>use) is that they derive their own rules from the examples you give
>them. These rules can be very complicated. This avoids human
>programming, which is the source of so many errors.

That's fine - within my guidelines. It's like Amazon trying to
guess what books I like from what books I have bought - sometimes it
hits, sometimes it misses. But it can't read my mind.

I don't want to program it - I just want to give it guidance.

(Not to mention domains from which I want to see all e-mail).
 >> Stay informed about: Junk Filter Question