Next week sounds good Marla, I will actually have some time then. I have had almost none this week.

This is just a cross link. I have another case almost identical. Both that IMAP Yahoo. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1062404

In neither case do I really have a clue as to the cause. But I m assuming it is yahoo. I am at something of a loss.

Matt, what distinguish a junk folder from a normal folder other than the name? Could a junk folder hold another name? What happens if Marla13 created a new "Mum"-folder? Those are questions I don't have the answer to.

Matt said

There is filtering alright. Yahoo spam filtering. X-YahooFilteredBulk: 65.20.0.12 This header indicates that yahoos spam filter considers the mail originating from the IP address shown is spam.

@Matt: It may indeed seems that this filter header is at the root of the problem. However, as Marla as reported it, the e-mails at hand are not identified by Yahoo Mail as junk. If they arrive when Thunderbird is closed, they are not moved to the Junk folder: that moving, therefore the flagging as junk, is done by Thunderbird.

In my case, bad classification as Junk happens on all e-mail accounts, including one that is on my own VPS on my own domain. On most (I don't write "all" because I don't get many junk e-mails on accounts other than Yahoo) e-mail accounts though, clicking the "Not junk" icon is enough to prevent a specific e-mail from being flagged as junk again. However, on my Yahoo account, any e-mail initially flagged as junk will be flagged again seconds after I have informed Thunderbird that the e-mail isn't junk. Click to approve an e-mail, view another folder, come back, and bam! the e-mail is flagged again. Two seconds is all it takes.

To me, it's obvious that the problem lies in the way that Thunderbird handles what it sees as a definitive indication that an e-mail is junk e-mail, and in how that indication has more value than what the user says. It's a major problem, especially on mailing-lists as I'm on the OpenOffice API mailing-list and just about every initial/thread-opening e-mail is classified as junk. The oldest such e-mail I have on that ML is from May 19.

Unfortunately, I can't preventively add every e-mail address of an open mailing list to my address book. And adding a sender in my personal address book doesn't always change the behavior, which btw is the reason why I completely disabled the scam reporting as it was just as strange in its behavior. And last, there's no way (that I know of) of saying that all e-mails to api@openoffice.apache.org are not junk. I've also now deactivated the automatic junk filtering and I do it now by hand.

Gnospen said

Matt, what distinguish a junk folder from a normal folder other than the name? Could a junk folder hold another name? What happens if Marla13 created a new "Mum"-folder? Those are questions I don't have the answer to.

This I missed a month ago.

There is a flag set on junk folders. But there is an add-on for that so you can experiment manually. Normally setting the folder in the Junk setting for the account is enough to set the flag.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/folderflags/

Amenel said

Matt said

There is filtering alright. Yahoo spam filtering. X-YahooFilteredBulk: 65.20.0.12 This header indicates that yahoos spam filter considers the mail originating from the IP address shown is spam.

@Matt: It may indeed seems that this filter header is at the root of the problem. However, as Marla as reported it, the e-mails at hand are not identified by Yahoo Mail as junk. If they arrive when Thunderbird is closed, they are not moved to the Junk folder: that moving, therefore the flagging as junk, is done by Thunderbird.

Does your mail have that header? That header is created by Yahoo. It has nothing to do with Thunderbird. Thunderbird does not even know what it is other than a string of ASCII text. Regardless of the outcome you think you are seeing, it is only Yahoo mail servers that have any use for that header and they add it.

If your mail does not have that header then your talking about something different and probably should open your own support question so the two different things do not get muddled. But keep in mind that the junk filter is a learning filter. You teach it what is junk and not junk. One thing however you will not teach it is that mail from a specific address is Junk. it will not listen. it uses Bayesian analysis for the mail and the sender address is only a part of the things it looks at.

You think the problem is Thunderbird, go to the junk setting in account settings and turn junk filtering off. If it goes away entirely as an issue 'i will listen to Thunderbird doing something.Personlly I think it will make not a shred of difference as the yahoo server will move the mail back to the junk folder as fast as you move it out. One of the reason I use POP with my Yahoo mail address. Their support of real mail protocols is at best poor and at worst plain disgraceful.

Thanks for keeping this thread alive guys:). I had resolved to just manually telling Thunderbird that each email is *Not Junk* after they had been marked as Junk. I'm about to go on leave for 2 weeks but will take a look at the add-on upon my return (but I'm not sure if the Add-on is relevant to my issue since my mum's emails do not go into the Junk folder-they actually go into her own "mum" folder). So, it's not as if Thunderbird is automatically putting them into my Junk folder-no, it isn't doing that. The emails are arriving into "mum's mail" and being marked as Junk.

I take on board Matt's point, that "one thing however you will not teach it is that mail from a specific address is Junk. it will not listen. it uses Bayesian analysis for the mail and the sender address is only a part of the things it looks at".

This complicates matters since it *is* only emails from my mum that Tbird thinks are Junk. Very odd indeed, whereas they are *not* marked as Junk when I view them in my web based Yahoo Mail. I just don't get it:).

I'll be back in touch when I return (mid-Sept) and if I find a solution to this conundrum.

Best wishes, Marla

Marla13 said

This complicates matters since it *is* only emails from my mum that Tbird thinks are Junk. Very odd indeed, whereas they are *not* marked as Junk when I view them in my web based Yahoo Mail. I just don't get it:).

I do not recall if I mentioned this, I probably hopefully did.

Check in Tools menu > account settings > Junk and make sure your local address books are selected. With a check mark against them. Being in the address book only works as a white list if that address book is selected.

If everything else fails you can set up a filter:

If from is (or contains) mums.address set junk-status to not junk

Thanks Gnospen but I had tried that (setting up a filter) and unfortunately, that didn't work.

Thanks Matt; I think I've already done that (months ago) but will check again when I'm back at work with my PC.

Something about marking the email as read, then unread, then clearing the flag makes it stay clear for an extended time but eventually comes back.