PatrickMD.net

I have used Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client for two years now. While I absolutely love using TBird, I have noticed more spam getting through than before. I realized I hadn’t updated any of the junk mail settings since version 1.0.x, so I decided to rebuild the settings and see how it works. The following steps work for Thunderbird v1.5.

1. Tools->Junk Mail Controls…

   1. Check the “Trust mail headers sent by…” and set to “SpamAssassin“. My primary mail ISP uses SpamAssassin and the headers are a great guide. (However, I have read reports of bogus SA headers possibly added by spammers.)

   2. Click “Adaptive Filter” tab and click “Reset Training Data“. This lets us start training from scratch.
2. Tools->Options…->Advanced
   1. Click “Config Editor…” and type “junk” in the Filter window.
   2. Change the “mail.adaptivefilters.junk_threshold” value from 90 to something less. I have mine set to 50 and I’ll let you know how well that works.

See also:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Junk_Mail_Controls
• Junk Mail Improvement [MozillaZine Forums]

Other Thunderbird mail handling tips are appreciated.

Tags:   gmail · spam · thunderbirdNo Comments