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    Opera Mail frequently classifies contacts (both followed and unfollowed) as Spam

    Opera for Windows
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    • dzl200
      dzl200 last edited by

      Hi, I just installed the latest standalone Opera Mail and am having the above problem. Is this a known bug? The Spam filter settings are extremely sparse (Spam -> Properties). Is there an Advanced mode available that gives access to more detailed controls?

      Thanks in advance, and apologies if this was posted to the wrong forum but I didn't see one specifically for Opera Mail.

      David

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      • leocg
        leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by

        I used to just disable the spam filter and enable the "learn from labeled messages" option so the filter could learn my "preferences".

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        • dzl200
          dzl200 last edited by

          Thanks, I'll try that. It seems like not marking messages from valid contacts as SPAM is kind of a no-brainer, and so should already be hardcoded into the SPAM filter's rules.

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          • leocg
            leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by

            Are you using a pop or an imap account? If an imap one, you should also check your mail provider spam settings as it may be the one doing the mess.

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            • dzl200
              dzl200 last edited by

              No, I'm using pop. The mail server isn't doing any spam filtering.

              I guess not many people use Opera mail otherwise I'm assuming this would have been fixed long ago. Seems like a 1-2 line code change...

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              • burnout426
                burnout426 Volunteer last edited by

                It seems like not marking messages from valid contacts as SPAM is kind of a no-brainer, and so should already be hardcoded into the SPAM filter's rules.

                Opera doesn't do that as it's easy for a spammer to spoof the From header, which could then include a valid contact, which could allow the spammer to bypass the spam filter.

                There should have been an option though for users that don't care about that, but Opera never added one and won't now as Opera Mail isn't being worked on anymore.

                As a workaround, you might be able to add a From header does not contain xxx@example.com rule for each of your contacts to the spam filter properties (were all rules are joined by AND). Or, you might be able to use a single rule with regexp that lists all the email addresses in a does not contain way. However, either way, I'm not sure if the spam filter's internal filters and learned rules get priority or not. If they do and one of those catch a message from one of your contacts, there might not be anything you can do.

                However, if you uncheck "learn from labeled messages" for the spam filter and close out of the dialog, that should clear the learned rules. Then, you can enable it again and start training it again where you mark any false positives as not spam and eventually you won't get false positives.

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                • dzl200
                  dzl200 last edited by

                  Hi,

                  Thanks for your ideas.

                  Opera doesn't do that as it's easy for a spammer to spoof the From header, which could then include a valid contact,
                  which could allow the spammer to bypass the spam filter.

                  Of course you're right, but it seems like the chances of that happening are pretty small, and given the tradeoffs I think it would have been a better decision to have allowed marked contacts to not be marked as spam. Right now I spend considerable time every day just fishing my valid contacts out of spam.

                  I think you're right though, based on the behavior it seems that the spam filter's internal filters get priority. A simple option to disable that would have been an easy thing to do.

                  I will try playing around a bit with the rules and settings, but since I get > 1000 spam messages/day, trying to retrain the filter might be too time-consuming.

                  I had been using Thunderbird but had a number of problems with it as well. It would be nice if there was some e-mail client out there "that just worked" (in the words of Steve Jobs) 🙂 It can't be that hard...

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                  • leocg
                    leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by

                    Of course you're right, but it seems like the chances of that happening are pretty small

                    Just for the info: I've already received spam and/or suspicious messages supposedly sent from friends or even from myself.

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                    • dzl200
                      dzl200 last edited by

                      Either way could be 'correct' or 'wrong' depending on the user's needs. Not making this a user-definable preference is a poor design decision. I see I'm probably going to have write my own e-mail client...

                      If Opera has no plans to work on Mail anymore, they should release the code as open source so it can be improved.

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                      • burnout426
                        burnout426 Volunteer last edited by

                        based on the behavior it seems that the spam filter's internal filters get priority.

                        You can try turning the internal filter off so that the spam filter just goes by its learned rules (when "learn from labeled messages is checked)

                        Another thing you can do besides clearing the learned rules (as mentioned before) is to rebuild the search index. Close down Opera and delete the "lexicon" folder in the "mail" folder. When Opera starts up, that will cause Opera to rebuid its search index. You'd do that to rule out problems with the search index which could affect spam message matching.

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                        • dzl200
                          dzl200 last edited by

                          Thanks, those sound like great ideas. I'll try them...

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