Problem with Mail.app native Junk filter interfering

Hi,

When I installed the SpamSieve, more than a year ago, I followed the suggestion in the documentation and inserted two inconsistent rules in the Mail.app Junk filter Advanced panel. This seemed to work fine until recently, when I was bothered with many false positives, and I realized that they had nothing to do with SpamSieve (the messages were not colored). It seems that the Mail.app configuration does not allow any more the two inconsistent rules recommended by SpamSieve documentation (and it automatically removes one of them if both are set). I have inserted another impossible rule, similar to “Subject equal to asjkvvkajdflahjfew”; the issue is that, occasionally, I still have some strange false positives.

So, my questions are:

  • If the message is not colored, could it have been moved by SpamSieve?
  • Does Mail.app move messages into the Junk folder although they do not satisfy the rules defined in the Advanced panel?

Here is my configuration of Mail.app junk filter:
http://www.tagliasteel.com/forum_images/screenshot_352.jpg

And here is the Advanced panel:
http://www.tagliasteel.com/forum_images/screenshot_353.jpg

I would like to leave the Mail.app Junk filter on because of the handy shortcut to remove all spam messages, and because it is possible to map IMAP folders directly to the Junk folder. Nonetheless, if it is not possible to avoid the above-mentioned problem, I will remove the filter.

Thanks for the wonderful application and for your help!
Cesare Tagliaferri

I’ve heard no other reports of that, and it’s working on my Mac. Which version of Mac OS X do you have? If you set it up according to the documentation, when does it remove the second condition?

I don’t think so, but to be sure you could check thelog to see whether SpamSieve thought the message was spam.

I don’t think so. Maybe you have a server-side filter that’s doing that? Also, try unchecking “Trust junk mail headers set by my Internet Service Provider.”

I’ve heard no other reports of that, and it’s working on my Mac. Which version of Mac OS X do you have? If you set it up according to the documentation, when does it remove the second condition?

I have 10.4.10, and you are right: I have tried to set up again the two inconsistent rules and it allowed me to. I probably removed one by mistake, and in any case the “subject = random string” should have done the trick too.

I don’t think so, but to be sure you could check the log to see whether SpamSieve thought the message was spam.

Thanks for pointing me to the log file; it actually seems that the message was tagged as spam by SpamSieve:

Predicted: Spam (100)
Subject: Some subject
From: Some@address
Identifier: RgTcgCPrxjD5/sDiGXz8cQ==
Reason: has encoded HTML part
Date: 2007-08-09 17:06:17 +0800

Could there be an issue that prevented the color change? For information, the account which received the message is hosted on an Exchange server and accessed using IMAP.

It’s possible (since SpamSieve would not treat that as a fatal error), but I’m not aware of that being a general problem.