199622 - [junk] automatically mark message as junk if sender is not in personal address book [pab]. Junk whitelist/blacklist

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Patrick]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030327
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030327

[couldn't find existing bug, so here goes]
Currently the junk mail controls have the option to 
- messages from sender in the address book are marked as NOT junk.

This logic could also be reversed of course : messages from sender
- messages from sender NOT in the address book are marked as junk.

not as fancy as bayesian spam filters, but possibly a convenient addition to it 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
not in address book can still end up in inbox

Expected Results:  
strict filter

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

If bug 181631 was solved (add "mark as junk" as a filter action), than we can
create a filter that automaticaaly marks all mail from senders that are not in
the Personal Addressbook, as junk.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 181631 ***

Comment 2

[Patrick]

Sorry to be stubborn, but reopening ;)

I agree that bug 181631 will probably offer the same _functionality_ ...but a
user setting up his junk mail does that from the "Junk Mail Controls" and not
via message filters.

It's my guess [also based on repeated questions in the newsgroups] that many
users will expect a checkbox there saying "mark messages from a sender NOT in
the address book as junk".

I think from a UI point this should resort under the Junk Mail Controls [as well].

Comment 3

[Bill McCartney]

The use of Whitelist/Blacklists will at some point have to be implimented.I do
*NOT* agree with the "Mark all mails not in addressbook as Junk".After training
JunkMail Controls with over 8000 spams and about that many good mails I can
still only achieve about 77% accuracy.I believe,and can prove,that the controls
will *Never* be 100% accurate since I have a corpus of 168 "Spam Mails" that the
controls absolutely refuse to mark as "Junk".My filters,one to block by "Domain"
and one to block by "Email address" (3.32MB msgFilterRules.dat file)are 99%
effective and move to the "Junk" folder and are then marked by JunkMail
Controls.Rarely do I get a "Spam Mail" in my Inbox using the filters.The size of
this msgFilterRules.dat file could be Cut by 60% or more (guestimating) by
reverting Mozilla to reading the  msgFilterRules.dat as case "Sensitive" but it
has been marked as "Wontfix".Both Filters and Junk Controls used together are
near 100% effective leaving an occasional spam mail in the inbox and rarely ever
a false positive with the Junk Controls.There are so many bugs and RFEs that to
vote for all I would like to see implimented would require about 7 or 8 Bugzilla
accounts.Other than Operational Bugs, Spam Filtering is IMHO a Top
Priority.Thanks to the Mail/News team for finally getting us users some Spam
Controls.

Comment 4

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

mass re-assign.

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

So, you basically never want to get mail from unknown senders? Then just create
a new folder, and create a filter to move all mails from senders not in your
address inot that folder. Using junk mail for that is IMHO wrong. My address is
most likely not in your address book, but if I send you a private email message
as reply to your bugzilla comment, that certainly is not junk, and I'd be
offended, if you just threw my mail personally composed to you just away because
of such reasons, so I don't think that Mozilla should specifically aid you with
that route.

Suggesting WONTFIX.

Comment 6

[Bogdan Stroe]

Junk email is whatever the receiver considers is junk. That's why the user is
supposed to train the filter. I think the addition of a whitelist/blacklist to
the bayesian filter is a good idea, because it gives greater flexibility to the
user.

Comment 7

[Daniel Wang]

-> Wontfix

1. Filters and the Junk Mail Controls both filter messages, and this introduce
certain unwanted behaviors--for example, should JMC apply before or after
filters, should filters be applied automatically when mail is marked as not
junk, should JMC apply to filtered messages? We need to reduce the complexity of
these features for both code manageability and usability.

2. filtering messages from senders not in PAB can already be done with filters.

3. This is not how Junk Mail Controls work. Let's stick to the design plan (use
beyesian filtering) and not add things to do what it's not designed for.

Comment 8

[Bogdan Stroe]

Who took the decision to WONTFIX? I think mainly the reporter or the owner of
the bug should be able to do this.

I'm not familiar with the actual code of the bayesian filter, but it shouldn't
be very hard to assign 0 or 100 probability of being spam to an e-mail from start.