Junk mail, also known as “spam”, along with viruses and phishing attacks1 are an ongoing problem with email. Your email account comes with built-in junk mail filtering. The junk mail filter examines incoming email for viruses, phishing attacks, and general unsolicited messages.
Unfortunately, senders of junk mail are constantly adapting to automated filters, and finding new ways to get their messages through. Filters that are too agressive may reject legitimate messages, making it difficult for others to reach you.
Your junk mail filter applies numerous tests to all incoming email. Messages that are clearly identified as junk are rejected at the email server. Some messagaes may be delayed for several minutes while additional tests are performed on the sending email server. Messages that are suspicious, but may be legitimate, are let through, but marked as likely junk and moved into your Junk folder. Regular messages are deilvered normally to your Inbox.
The intelligent junk mail filter learns and becomes better at identifying both junk mail and regular messages over time, based upon your actions.
Because some legitimate messages may be erroneously marked as junk, it’s important to periodically check your Junk folder. By simply moving a message out of the Junk folder and into the Inbox, or another folder, you teach the filter that the message should not have been marked as junk.
On the other hand, if you move messages into your Junk folder2, you teaching the filter that those messages are junk mail. This feedback allows the filter to become better at identifying junk mail over time.
If you simply delete junk mail from your inbox, you’re not training the junk mail filter. Instead of deleting junk mail, mark it as such (or drag it into your Junk folder).
After 14 days, messages in your Junk folder are automatically deleted. You may safely delete messages from the Junk folder any time before that without affecting the junk mail filter.
Many email clients have a feature to filter which messages are shown in any given folder. Setting it to show only unread messages for the Junk folder can make sorting junk mail easier. You just click each junk message to mark it as read, and you no longer see it. The 14-day auto-delete takes care of it from there.
A phishing attack is where the attacker attepmpts to get you to enter sensitive data, like passwords or financial information, into a website they control. These attacks try to fool you by impersonating someone you trust. ↩︎
In most email clients, marking or flagging a message as junk mail automatically moves it into your Junk folder. This may require additional configuration of your email client. ↩︎