recently, I have had random emails end up in the spam folder in Apple mail. I have never had this happen before. There doesn't seem to be a pattern. I got one from Microsoft Store. One from KQED. One from Consumers Reports. They are legit emails and not spam. I don't have a spam filter setup so it's not from email filtering.
I'm using MacOS Big Sur 11.2
MacBook Pro 17″, macOS 10.13
Digging further into DreamHost, I discovered that they have their own mechanism for identifying email as spam. When they do, they insert a special header that causes that email to go to the spam folder. Unfortunately, their algorithm is incorrectly tagging some of my email. This is an issue I must take up with Dreamhost. Apple is not involved.
thank you for your patience is helping me. Please consider this case resolved.
Digging further into DreamHost, I discovered that they have their own mechanism for identifying email as spam. When they do, they insert a special header that causes that email to go to the spam folder. Unfortunately, their algorithm is incorrectly tagging some of my email. This is an issue I must take up with Dreamhost. Apple is not involved.
thank you for your patience is helping me. Please consider this case resolved.
Hello Doug Jackson,
It sounds like emails are being routed to the Junk folder incorrectly, and we want to help.
What type of email account are you using? If you're using iCloud Mail, the "Correct false-positives" part of this page may help: Identify and filter junk mail in iCloud
Also, it sounds like you're using an older version of macOS; the current version is 11.2.3. You may want to try updating macOS using the steps found here: How to update the software on your Mac
Prior to updating your device, we'd suggest making sure you have a current backup of the information on your device. More about how to back up here: Back up your Mac
Thanks!
Doug Jackson,
Thank you for letting us know more about the situation, and we appreciate you taking the time to update your device.
If you continue to experience the same behavior, we'd like to confirm a few additional details to help narrow this down further.
Just to confirm, do you use any other email accounts with the Mail app? If so, does the issue only happen with that specific account? If you view that account in webmail, does the Spam folder appear there as well?
There is also some additional information on the following page that can help organize and manage email on Mac: Organize email on your Mac
Thank you.
The emails are NOT going to the junk but are going to a folder I have never seen before called spam.
I am not using iCloud. My mail host is a third party called DreamHost.
The emails do not satisfy any of my existing Rules. Nor are they consistently coming from the same sender as I noted in my original message.
The "older version" of macOS is 11.2. You are suggesting I update to 11.2.3, a minor update. I can do that.
I do have a couple of other email accounts but they have very little activity and so far are not having the issue.
The Spam folder appeared on my laptop running MacOS11.2.3 and my iPhone running 14.4.2. The Spam folder does not appear on the iMap server at Dreamhost. Note, I did not create the Spam folder. It just appeared a week or so ago.
I also checked the inbox on the DH server to see if the emails in the Spam folder appeared. They do not. That is very odd behavior since the emails are stored on the server, not on my laptop or iPhone. I thought that was so odd that I just went back through each of the 49 mailboxes looking for any of the 5 emails in my Spam folder. nothing. As pointed out before, I have no rules involving moving emails to a Spam folder.
update to last reply.
I looked further into my webmail account on the Dreamhost server and discovered the Spam folder. It looks like it defaulted to NOT being displayed. So I didn't see it. When I set it to display, the 5 emails that appeared in the spam folder on my laptop and iphone showed. So, that part of the mystery is explained. I still do not know why there is a spam folder in the first place and what criteria is used to place emails in that folder.
random emails going to spam folder
