Thunderbird and Spam

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drc0304
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Joined: August 18th, 2017, 8:23 am

Thunderbird and Spam

Post by drc0304 »

I am using TB as a POP app with an email acct being serviced by AT&T.

Recently I noticed that my SPAM messages on the AT&T web-based email system server are NOT being downloaded when I use TB. Consequently, I have been missing some legit emails that AT&T marked as SPAM

I contacted AT&T about this and they could give me no info as to how to get the SPAM emails downloaded.

Is there some setting in TB that I can change/set to require that all msgs from the AT&T server are downloaded regardless of whether AT&T thinks they are SPAM or not.

If not, then I will have to go to the web-based AT&T email system to see if there are msgs NOT downloaded.

THX

Dennis Celeschi
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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird and Spam

Post by DanRaisch »

I am using TB as a POP app with an email acct being serviced by AT&T.
That's not an option with a POP type email account in any email client. That protocol only permits the email client (Thunderbird in this case) to access the server inbox folder. In other words, Thunderbird never even knows that there are messages in other folders like Junk to be downloaded because the POP protocol does not make that information available to TB.

If you want access to those additional folders in Thunderbird, consider switching your account to IMAP -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Convert_a_POP ... AP_account (Note that while those directions mention moving messages from the POP folders to the IMAP account folders after it is set up, it would be better to copy the message between the two. That way if there is any issue with transferring messages up to the IMAP server, data will not be lost.)
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird and Spam

Post by tanstaafl »

POP accounts use the POP3 protocol. It literally only knows about the inbox folder on the mail server. Some webmail implementations have a command to tell the mail server to lie, and also fetch the contents of the spam folder when the email client checks for new mail in the inbox. The email client is totally oblivious of this.

I suggest you browse your webmail settings and see if there is something like that setting. The person you talk to when you call your ISP for help usually has little knowledge and works off of scripts. Its possible the webmail command you want exists, but they didn't think it was worth adding to the scripts.

Another possible solution would be to see if they have a webmail command to disable "spamquard" (your email provider detecting spam).
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makaiguy
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Re: Thunderbird and Spam

Post by makaiguy »

.. and if the AT&T support folks didn't understand such a basic concept about the POP protocol, that's pitiful. If they didn't even know to ask(or check themselves) whether you were using the POP or IMAP protocol when a question arose about messages in a folder other than Inbox not getting downloaded, that's doubly pitiful.
Doug Wilson
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