I know how you feel, I've had some of those. I have also had junk emails with a date of a couple of years ago. This would seem to be one of the latest methods spammers are using. There is no method of choosing a 'Today' date which auto checks with date on computer and because the filter date entry is specific, it is not an ideal method. Message Filters to identify junk is not the best approach due to the thousands of permutations and varients. You could end up spending most of your life devoted to spam junk filtering, creating tons of filters. To be honest, Message Filters is really best used for good emails eg: to auto sort them into folders. Have you set up the 'Account Settings' > 'Junk Settings' for the account so that Thunderbird Junk Controls are enabled ? Have you been training the Junk Controls selecting both Junk and Not Junk? In which case, you should be able to train it to recognise the junk mail as there wil probably be other indicators than date which Thunderbird would recognise.