Spam Folder
When connecting to our email service over IMAP we will create a special folder named spam (lowercase). If you delete the spam folder it will be re-created next time you log in.
Some email clients recognise this folder as being 'special' and may call it something else, e.g. our webmail calls it Junk
The service will then move messages that have been classified as spam into this folder (unless you are doing your own Sieve filtering). This helps keep your inbox free of spam and you should keep an eye on this folder in case there are messages that are not spam.
Some email clients (e.g. K-9 Mail for Android) refuse to notify the user of new mail in the Spam folder. This behaviour can be corrected by declaring (e.g. in the account's folder settings) that there is no special Spam folder.
Disabling the spam folder
To stop the mail system from putting spam (or any) messages then you can create an allow list for your address on the Control Pages.
Spam 'learning'
Our spam checking system performs many checks on a message to decide whether it is spam or not. One of the checks it can do, is to compare the message with previous messages -this is called Bayesian Learning.
Checking the learning
If you view the 'headers' of a message, you should see the spam report, and a line looking like:
-3.0 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1%
or perhaps
0.8 BAYES_50 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60%
Here you can see the 'Bayes spam probability' as a percentage. In the first example the Bayes really thinks the message is not spam - it says 0-1%. The second example is less sure about it.
Teaching the system
If the 'Bayes spam probability' is incorrect, then it can be taught about messages that it has got wrong in the following ways:
- Move a message OUT of the spam folder to tell the system it is NOT spam
- Move a message IN to the spam folder to tell the system it IS spam
If you make a mistake, just move the message back.
The process of learning doesn't guarantee that the system will be correct next time a similar message is received, but it should help and you should see a change in the 'probability' in the headers.
Legacy folders
In the past we used to have a system that used folders called learnham and learnspam - this system is no longer used. These
folders can be removed.