E-mails marked as not spam are still going to the junk folder

[christianrj]

Hi!

Many users in our company are complaining that when they mark a message in Junk folder as not spam (clicking on button NOT SPAM), the new messages are still going to the junk folder, instead of the inbox.

So, Zimbra is not respecting the operation.

How to fix this so that all e-mails marked as not spam start going to the inbox folder immediately?

Zimbra version is 8.6.0-OS Patch-6. Operating system is CentOS 6.7 x64 fully updated.

Thank you!

[L. Mark Stone]

The "Not Spam" button as I understand it triggers the email to be added to the SpamAssassin Bayes database, so "Not Spam" is not a cure-all.

Probably the better way to do this is to ask the user to go to Preferences > Mail and then scroll down to Spam Mail Options. In that space the user can create their own personal black and white lists.

Hope that helps,
Mark

[tonster]

Yeah, as Mark indicated, that's not really how the 'not spam' button works. It's a portion of the spam/ham training system, but simply clicking 'not spam' once will not necessarily (and in most cases just will not) prevent it from going to spam in the future. If it did, then clicking spam on things that were clearly not spam (which users often do, with things such as announcements or mailing lists, because they think that spam is another word for 'something I don't like seeing') would have detrimental effects on a system. In this case, you're really better off manually analyzing things that are going to spam often and determining why from the headers. Often, you can either find things to whitelist in that way, or otherwise repair the things that are causing them to go to spam in the first place. There's a good write-up (that Mark contributed to ) at https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Improving_Anti-spam_system that might help you out.

[christianrj]

Dear L. Mark Stone and tonster,

I completely understand your responses from an administrator standpoint, but from a end-user standpoint, it is difficult to explain this to them.

How to explain to a an end-user that expects the NOT SPAM button to function as the user expects, but when they click the NOT SPAM button, the new messages "may" go to the inbox, but they "may" still go to the spam folder?
How to explain the end-users that the NOT SPAM button real function is to train the system, but there is no guarantees that the messages will go to the inbox and they must ask an administrator or a support technician to start creating filters or whitelists for them?

Does the Trusted Addresses in Preferences > Trusted Addresses / Domains can be used to 100% guarantee that a message from a sender or all messages from a domain goes to the user inbox (without asking someone to create filters or whitelists) or only to show images in messages?

Thank you!

[quanah]

No one has to make whitelists/blacklists for them. Every user can create their own whitelists and/or blacklists.

[christianrj]

No one has to make whitelists/blacklists for them. Every user can create their own whitelists and/or blacklists.

Quanah, I found this setting in Preferences > Mail > Spam Mail Options in the Zimbra Web Client. A maximum of 100 domains/emails can be added in each list.

This settings will be respected 100% by Zimbra? If a user adds a domain or sender address in the whitelist, all the messages will go to inbox instead of Junk folder?

Also, Preferences > Trusted Addresses is only used to show images in messages?

Thank you!

[quanah]

No one has to make whitelists/blacklists for them. Every user can create their own whitelists and/or blacklists.

Quanah, I found this setting in Preferences > Mail > Spam Mail Options in the Zimbra Web Client. A maximum of 100 domains/emails can be added in each list.

This settings will be respected 100% by Zimbra? If a user adds a domain or sender address in the whitelist, all the messages will go to inbox instead of Junk folder?

Also, Preferences > Trusted Addresses is only used to show images in messages?

Thank you!

Yes, amavis uses the whitelist/blacklist for scoring. So if the user or domain is in the whitelist for a given user, it will drop the score it derived, allowing it to go straight to the inbox. If it is in the blacklist, the email will end up directly in the junk folder, regardless of how amavis would have scored the email.

That sounds correct for the second option as well.

[dkobale]

There is also an issue the other way round. I am marking email as SPAM and its not accepting and I continue to get repeat emails which has been marked into the main inbox. This is getting silly now, as I am having to delete 50 ore more SPAM emails daily. The strange thing is its only happening my my account, as the others in the company the SPAM filer works fine.

This issue only started since the last software update of Zimbra.

Dan

[EdwinKok]

I have put some e-mail addresses on the white list but still e-mails from these addresses are going to the spam folder. So it seems it doesn't work. Am I doing something wrong?

[borepstein]

I have put some e-mail addresses on the white list but still e-mails from these addresses are going to the spam folder. So it seems it doesn't work. Am I doing something wrong?

We have similar issues. Some users' emails (not all messages - just some) end up in Junk or Trash. White-listing them does not seem to help.

I am wondering if there is a particular Zimbra module we need to look into? How is junk/not junk determination performed there?