To deal with the large corporeality of unsolicited e-mail ("spam" or "junk mail") that most people have to cope with, Thunderbird uses an adaptive filter that learns from your deportment which letters are legitimate and which are junk.

Tabular array of Contents

i Junk filter settings
- i.1 Global junk preferences
- i.2 Per account settings
2 Preparation the junk filter
- 2.1 Tell Thunderbird what is JUNK
- 2.2 Tell Thunderbird what is Not JUNK
3 Other ways of blocking unwanted messages

Junk filter settings

Global junk preferences

Junk filtering is enabled past default. You can ready global junk preferences to control what should happen to messages marked as junk. These settings will exist used by all of your email accounts (although some settings can be overridden in the account settings, equally shown beneath).

≡ > > > Junk

TB91-preferences-privacy-security-junk

Per business relationship settings

The junk settings in the business relationship settings for each of your email accounts will override similar settings in the global junk preferences described to a higher place. In this section, you can also select address books which will be used as a whitelist. Whatever messages from senders whose email address is in a whitelisted address book will not be marked every bit junk by Thunderbird.

≡ > > Your Account >

TB91-account-settings-junk-settings

Training the junk filter

Tell Thunderbird what is JUNK

In gild for Thunderbird'southward junk filter to be effective, you must railroad train information technology to recognize messages that you consider to be junk and messages that you consider to be not junk. So it is of import to mark messages as junk before deleting them.

In that location are several ways of marker messages as junk.

You can click on the piffling icon in the "junk" column of the bulletin list:

TB91-thread-pane-junk-column

You can also click the Junk button on the bulletin header toolbar:

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Or yous can press J on your keyboard to mark one or more selected messages as junk.

Thunderbird's junk filter has been designed to acquire from the training data which you provide. Marking more messages as junk or not junk (see below) will improve the accuracy of your junk filter by calculation more preparation information.

Tell Thunderbird what is NOT JUNK

Sometimes Thunderbird's junk filter might go it incorrect and marker adept messages equally junk. Therefore, information technology is just as important to tell the filter which messages are not junk, especially on a new installation of Thunderbird.

Note: You should oft (daily or weekly) check your Junk folder for good letters wrongly marked as junk by Thunderbird and mark them as not junk. This will recover the good letters and ameliorate the correctness of the filter for the time to come.

There are several ways of marking messages as not junk.

Click on the Non junk button in the yellow junk notification beneath the bulletin header:

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Click on the orange junk icon in the junk column of the message listing to toggle the junk status of a bulletin:

TB91-thread-pane-junk-column

Or press Shift+J on your keyboard to mark one or more messages as not junk.

Furthermore, you should regularly train the filter past marking a number of skilful letters as not junk - messages in your Inbox and messages that have been filtered into other folders. In this case, you can merely employ the keyboard shortcut Shift+J, considering the Not Junk push button appears only for messages that take already been marked every bit junk. Marking several messages per week will be sufficient. You tin select several messages and marking all of them at the same fourth dimension. Unfortunately nothing in the user interface indicates whether a message has already been marked as "non junk".

Other ways of blocking unwanted letters

Thunderbird's adaptive junk filter is not an absolute bulwark confronting letters from a specific address or specific types of letters. If you demand a stronger mechanism to stop unwanted letters, consider Blocking a sender. You tin can also create a filter to block messages based on subject or other criteria.