Junk mail filter not working in Sierra

Are the messages going into the Junk folder marked brown in color and the Unmark button is available for them?

If not, then your email provider is marking them as Junk and putting them in the Junk folder on the server.

Another possibility is that you have Trust junk mail headers set in Junk prefs and an email server is identifying the messages as Spam. When either of those happen, Mail does not mark them as Junk (brown color) and you don't have the ability to unmark them since Mail didn't make the determination.

David Estes wrote:

Thanks for the suggestions. Items in the Junk folder are marked brown, but there is no Unmark button - only a Move to Inbox button.

Yeah, sorry, I think that is the new paradigm. I think it allows you to un-Junk them no matter if Mail marked them or something else marked them.

If they are marked brown, then the whole part after "if not marked brown" didn't apply to your situation.

Try resetting the Junk Mail filter: Mail for Mac: If junk mail filters aren’t working correctly

Bottom line is the junk mail filter clearly must have a bug. Correct?

If it were a bug, I would imagine many more people would experience it. But, you could have a unique email configuration and provider.

I'm going through the same problem here, and it's driving me mad!

No matter how many times I mark messages as spam, they keep on coming in.

Also, when I "delete" them from the junk box, they go to the trash bin, but not as the "brown" ones no more.

Don't know what to do, it's very disturbing. Resetting didn't work either.

Hey David, we're not crazy (yet), but as I said, the problem may drive us nuts... I'm getting around 300 spam messages a day.

As for the rules, I wouldn't know, for I have not stablished any. Contacts on my address book seem to be coming in ok, at least, I didn't notice any familiar name on the junk list.

One thing is for sure: the problem started after upgrading to Sierra.

Hope there's someone out there at Apple getting our "message in a bottle", and working on it.

Good luck to us!

😉

Same issues here! Junk mail filtering is definitely not working correctly after the upgrade. Yes, SOME messages do come in as junk but the majority do not.

If you're using iCloud mail, just turn off the Junk mail option in Mail preferences and manage your junk mail by dragging the junk to the junk folder and dragging the non-junk to your Inbox. Apple will take care of the rest.

Handle it the same way on your iDevices.

https://support.apple.com/kb/ph2649?locale=en_US

I have the same issue, sort of. In previous OSX versions, when a message arrived in the Junk folder, all you had to do was select it, mark it as not junk and it would change the text to black and move it to the Inbox. From then on, any mail from that address or sender would not be marked as junk.

In Sierra, it moves the mail to the Inbox, but the text is still "brown" and any emails from the same sender will still be marked as junk and go to the junk folder.

So I had a chat with Apple support and all they had to say was that is was a problem with my "Third-Party" ISP, in my case Telus. They insisted I call Telus before they would help me.

So I called Telus and as I predicted, they told me it was a Mac problem. I had Telus send me an email stating this and now I must call Apple and have them work through the problem.

I hope Apple reads these cases because this is obviously an OS issue with mail and they need to take ownership of this instead of making us jump though hoops.

I'm not using iCloud, but you gave me a good idea, Lanny: I am now filtering my junk mail directly on my server's page. Doing so prevents spam messages from hitting my inbox, locally.

So, thank you for the insight, pal!

Dave,

Curious to know if you have seen any improvement? My junk mail filter worked very well across numerous versions of OS X, but seemed to go haywire with Sierra. I have tried multiple fixes, to include a total reset. Despite what appears to be very minor improvements over a two week timeframe, there are still issues. In particular, recognizing previous recipients is definitely an issue.

Thanks!

I thought I've found a solution here, but nope, filtering my messages remotely didn't work, because spam mail generates infinite address variations, so they keep pouring in, every minute.

Anxious for a bug fix from Apple.

a similar thread on this forum suggested simply resetting junk filter and having it learn from scratch, but that hasn't changed the amount of junk coming in or the legit email i have to salvage from the junk folder every day. Has anyone gone through dumping profiles and recreating new ones from scratch - and having it solve the junk problem?

Thanks for sharing, David, but I believe the only way out of this is fixing the bug.

Apple's job, as you mentioned. Are they even aware? It seems there are not so many of us, "complainers".
All I know is this trial and error we've been going through is proving to be useless (and soooo irritating).

If only have I known, I would have never updated the OS to Sierra. 😠

Bug fix – that's my mantra.