Are you asking about Firefox? I don't think it has an spam tools. Or are you asking about Thunderbird? It has some, pretty good junk filtering tools in my experience over the last 15 years or so. It can even trust the header set by a number of server side spam filtering tools in it's processing.

But to your question. I suggest you read the support article on the subject. It includes the information you ask for. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-junk-spam-messages

Just for the future, the spam toolbars from a number of antivirus vendors generally fail to function correctly post Thunderbird update. They are just that poorly integrated into Thunderbird. So if you have issues post update, that is probably the place to start your investigation.

i meant thunderbird....i asked thunderbird for help and was told thunderbird was now mozilla and mozilla page got me set in my mind on firefox because i couldn't see thunderbird on the mozilla face page and i got turned around

thunderbird is behaving badly IMO ... it doesn't 'learn' and although i basically never get spam mail it always finds the same old 'spam' emails by randomly selecting from the same legit emails

i'd prefer that thunderbird spam detector was just turned off

i'll read your suggested doc and see if there's an 'off' feature

i have located in thunderbird under Account Settings a Junk Settings file where one of the options is a checkbox that says Enable Junk Mail Adaptive Controls For This Account y/n

that might be the on/off switch for the junk mail spam filter

Yes it might be.

thunderbird was still marking normal messages as possible spam this morning.......so that is not the on/off switch, unlucky for me

thunderbird is a good program but so many things get sent to the spam file that i have to check the spam file a couple times a day to retrieve these messages

it shouldn't be that way

In an imap account there are many sources of mail going to junk. As you have already said there is the mail provider spam filters, your antivirus which you swear by and Thunderbird.

You have turned off Thunderbird's action and still have a problem. That is what 'I am hearing, so you need to look somewhere else.

Perhaps try disabling the spam filtering in your antivirus program.

its been 24 hours without an email going to spam .... we'll see how it goes

i'm a few weeks short of 74 and a bit of a dull blade so if its more than an on/off switch then i'm afeard of poking around too much on account of i might unleash a band of evil hobgoblins.....i've done it several times before

its been 3 days with no normal emails diverted to my spam folder so that is definite improvement.....so i am led to conclude that the on/off switch for the spam filter is in thunderbird Account Settings and i have been able to turn it off successfully

although it may be premature i am going to consider the problem solved