269236 - Using a white list or list in address book to filter email

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Jason Smethers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1

The vast majority of the email I receive is spam. I estimate that only about 2%
of my email is legitimate. It would be much simpler if I could create white
lists that could be used by the email filter to move these known legitimate
messages to other folders instead of putting them in my inbox with other unknown
email that is most likely spam not caught by the junk mail filter.

This would allow for a single filter rule instead of having to create a rule for
every legitimate address, and adding email to the list should be as simple as
marking the email as junk currently is.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[OstGote!]

You can do that with the filter option "sender is in my Address book". All
others you can mark as Junk with another filter (not in).

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> This would allow for a single filter rule instead of having to create a rule
> for every legitimate address

This feature exists, so long as you're satisfied with using the Address Book as 
your whitelist.

> adding email to the list should be as
> simple as marking the email as junk currently is.

Right now, the quickest way is to display the message, click on the sender's 
email address in the envelope, and select Add to Address Book from the menu.

Marking mail as Junk can be done without even selecting the message, but that 
requires a column in the thread-pane -- not many people would be interested in a 
"listed in address book" column.  With the message displayed, maybe a toolbar 
button could be created for "add sender to address book."  Possibly with a 
hotkey -- but hotkeys are in great demand.

Comment 3

[Mark]

I agree with the bug; *and* I can't find anything in the UI that resembles "the
filter option "sender is in my Address book" -- if I could, that would work.

There is nothing in Tools>Message Filters, nor in Tools>Junk Mail Controls that
has anything like that. I'm using Thunderbird 1.0 with IMAP.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Tools | Options | Advanced, Privacy
 [x] Block loading of remote images in mail messages
   [x] Allow remote images if sender is in my [address book selection]

Comment 5

[Jason Smethers]

Filtering by my address book is not adequate. It does not support regular
expressions, as far as I can tell.

What it comes down to is the following: editing filter rules with drop down
menus is extreamly slow, and extreamly clumsy. Also, the matching does not, at
least seems not to, support regular expressions, rather it gives the options of
"contains", "doesn't contain", "is", "isn't", etc.

I would be much nicer if I could make text lists containing entries of regular
expressions that match against one or more headers or the body.

At the very least it should be made clear whether or not regular expresions are
supported within the filter rules dialog. If not, another option "regular
expressions" or such should be added to the drop down list.


Also, I do not see a way to import/export filter rules.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Please ignore my comment 4; I was confused.

(In reply to comment #5)
> Filtering by my address book is not adequate. It does not support regular
> expressions, as far as I can tell.

Bug 66423.  Please search for bugs before reporting them.


> the matching [...] gives the options of "contains", "doesn't contain",
> "is", "isn't", etc.

For address fields, the match modes include "is/is not in my address book".

 
> [It] would be much nicer if I could make text lists

See bug 120160, bug 199698, 
Also bug 180012, bug 187771, and bug 263718.


> Also, I do not see a way to import/export filter rules.

That is unrelated to this bug.  Please don't confuse matters.  The more focused 
a bug is, the more likely it is someone will bother wading thru the discussion 
and fix it.  And, NOT SURPRISINGLY, that's ANOTHER bug that's ALREADY BEEN 
OPENED A LONG TIME.  In fact, there seem to be several old dupes or near-dupes, 
but bug 166842 is a request for that feature.  Please search for bugs before 
reporting them.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.