In the beginning, the built-in junk filter moved too many mails to the junk folder, which I then had to laboriously restore.
This filter is currently deactivated and I remove junk manually.
What criteria does the Spam Filter actually use for filtering? Is there any way of preventing it from getting out of hand?
What criteria does the Spam Filter actually use for filtering?
The basic Spam Filter enabled “by default in eM Client Rules” only applies to Local POP accounts.
(eM Client documentation on Rules).
Quote extract - “There is a pre-made Local rule in eM Client, Spam filter - This is the default SPAM filtering rule that takes suspicious messages and moves them to a Junk folder. This rule cannot be altered but can be turned off”
https://www.emclient.com/webdocumentation/en/10.0/emclient/default.htm#Rules/Rules.htm
Now if you have an IMAP, Exchange, Office 365 or iCloud account, the spam is controlled “either via your online mail box filtering” and / or by "optionally setting up rules manually in eM Client via "Menu / Rules depending on how good your online mailbox spam filtering is.
I don’t use Exchange, Office 365, iCloud mailboxes.
I still prefer POP3.
My most important mailboxes use MailEnable ESMTPS as server. In the mail header you will find entries such as:
X-Spam-Flag: NO
or
X-Spam-Flag: Yes
…
GMX uses in the header:
X-Gmx-Antispam: 0 (Mail was not recognised as spam); Detail=V3; (for no spam)
…
Another mail provider:
X-Spam-Level: (then empty)
…
But what about local spam detection?
Apple’s Mail.app as well as Thunderbird use local spam detection, both of which work very well! Rarely false positive!
I still prefer POP3
But what about local spam detection?
As you prefer to use a POP account, if your online mail box doesn’t have very good mail filtering, then apart from the basic Spam filtering in eM Client in Rules and / or adding your own rules manually (where you can setup rules to block spam via header info, subject or body info), some eM Client users alternatively use eg: Mailwasher Pro which they say works very well for them with POP accounts.
See my post in the following thread for their information on that via their links.
Also see my screenshots “in that thread” for how to disable the POP account checking on startup to then allow Mail Washer or whatever other external Spam Filtering program to work prior to manually downloading POP mail into eM Client.
Why don’t eM Client not include a Anti Spam filter self?
To my knowledge and experience, Apple Mail has implemented a very good filter. The one in Thunderbird also works well. Even with Postbox it worked very well.
Why don’t eM Client not include a Anti Spam filter self?
See @Gary post reply extract below from the following thread.
https://forum.emclient.com/t/more-intelligent-spam-blocking/91646/4
“eM Client doesn’t have spam filtering. That is left to your email provider. In modern times where users access the same account from multiple devices and apps, it is not efficient to have separate spam detection on each device and app. Rather, it can be done at the source, and have the same clean Inbox on all devices and apps when and if they connect to that account”.
“And some providers, like Google have artificial neural networks costing millions to detect and manage spam. A desktop app just can’t compete with that”.
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I don’t share this view, Apple also has a good spam detection system in Mail.app. Mozilla Thunderbird does too. Postbox also had spam detection.
I agree with @cyberzork view, spam filtering should be server side and not a required client based feature. This is due to the exact reason he brought up where if you have multiple devices, the filtering only happens if you have the client running with the spam filtering enabled. If it is not running then spam filtering will not take place on the other devices. Additionally, server side filtering has the ability to be trained more efficiently due to being able to have many users (some within the same domain) doing the training. So it is a much better function to be handled on the server side.
So I don’t think this is a must need feature for a client, but of course if enough users feel otherwise it can be voted on at SeekPlan: Add bayesian learning to junk/spam | Mail | eM Client
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