I have used Thunderbird, but my one complaint is that it takes a technician
like yourself to block unwanted emails. With Outlook Express, itās very
simple. Can you advise me how to do this easily with Thunderbird?
It depends on what you mean by āblocking unwanted emails.ā
If you mean spam, Thunderbird has a built-in spam filter, just like Outlook
Express had. While no spam filter is perfect, marking something as spam is
pretty easy.
If you mean that you want to block specific email addresses from showing up
in your inbox, that too is very similar to Outlook Expressās approach. Just be
aware that blocking senders by email address is not an effective way
to stop spam, no matter what email program you use.
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Thunderbirdās Junk Mail filter
Like some email programs, Thunderbird refers to spam as ājunk mailā and
includes a junk mail filter that can be trained over time ā the more email you
marks as spam, the better Thunderbird gets at identifying spam
automatically.
If you use multiple email accounts, then unlike many programs, Thunderbird
allows you to control junk mail differently for each account.
In Thunderbird, click on Tools, Account
Settingsā¦, and then Junk Settings within the email account you want
to configure.
In the example above, Iām looking at the Junk Settings for my first
configured email account (if you have only one email account, itāll be the first
as well ). āEnableā is checked to turn on the adaptive filter. Iāve also
specified that if the sender of an email is in my Personal Address Book, email
from that person should never be marked as junk.
Finally, Iāve indicated that junk mail should be automatically moved to a
Junk mail folder.
Training the Junk Mail Filter
Once youāve got it enabled, you can start telling Thunderbird what is and is
not junk.
In the message list, thereās a small āflameā icon (enlarged here):
Looking in list view, youāll see one of the column headers is that flame:
If the message has a flame icon and itās not really spam, click on the icon
to unset it. If the message is clearly spam (as the examples above all are),
then if the icon is not set, click that message in that column to set it.
Thunderbird will now treat that message as spam and use it to ālearnā what you
think is spam.
Similarly, if youāre looking at a full message, thereās a Junk button
available to tell Thunderbird that what youāre looking at is spam:
Filtering specific senders
If thereās a specific email address from which you never want to see email,
just like Outlook Express, you can use message filters to dispose of the
messages as soon as they arrive. There is no way to prevent the messages from
being sent to you ā again, regardless of what email program you use ā but you
can make them disappear as soon as they show up.
On Thunderbirdās Tools menu, click on Message
Filtersā¦:
Again, Thunderbird allows you to maintain a different set of filters for
every account you use, so start by selecting the account in āFilters for:ā.
Then click on Newā¦:
In the example shown above, Iāve defined a filter:
-
Itās named āDelete mail from Fred.ā
-
It looks for āFromā containing Fredās email address
(fred@somerandomservice.com). -
When it finds mail that matches that condition, it deletes the mail
immediately.
With that rule, Iāll never see email from Fred again.
Naturally, youād add whatever conditions and email addresses you would want
to block.
Click OK.
We now have a blocking filter.
Why is there no Block Sender�
Block Sender⦠in Outlook Express is really just a shortcut that does the
equivalent of creating the filter we created above. (Outlook Express kept this
as a separate list ā no actual filter was created ā but it was essentially the
same thing.)
The problem is that Block Sender⦠doesnāt work.
ā¦ā
More correctly, Block Sender⦠doesnāt do what most people think it
does.
Block Sender⦠doesnāt stop spam. It doesnāt even make a
dent in it.
Spammers caught wind of Block Sender⦠years ago, and they render
it completely ineffective simply by sending their messages from
hundreds of thousands of randomly chosen spoofed email addresses. The
āFrom:ā line in spam is now completely meaningless, and itās completely
pointless to try and block the supposed sender of spam.
Building a block senders list to stop spam only slows down your email
program as it has to check every email that comes in against the list.
And it doesnāt work.
It will not block, or even slow down, spam. The only thing it will slow down
is your email program.
Use the spam or junk email filters to deal with spam.
Create sender-blocking filters when you have an actual, specific email
address that you know is repeatedly sending you something you never
want to see.
I can recommend āMail Washerā as a very effective
way of scanning, blocking and deleting unwanted mail and will work with most if not all email clients. Most of which leave a lot to be desired when it comes to preventing spam.
Yours ā¦
You can also use the same filtering mechanism to create a āwhite listā (I call mine People I Know) and if the person sending the email isnāt listed, I wonāt see it unless I select āAllā. I do select āAllā periodically just clean out the junk and make sure I havenāt missed something of value from an unlisted email address. But for day-to-day use, white-listing is an excellent solution.
PS: Make sure that āis in my address bookā is included in the list. Saves a lot of aggravation.