OL2003 - Junk mail and external spam filtering

[Bo Berglund]

Just upgraded to OL2003SP2 from OL2000.
I have a spam filter sitting in between my ISP and OL (K9 if you are
interested). I have had it running perfectly for about a year and it
is like 99.9% accurate!

However, now that I upgraded to OL2003 the emails that are marked as
spam no longer disappear, instead they are put into the Junk folder
and I have to manually clear them out. Is there any way I can change
this?

The way K9 works is the following:
- OL asks for POP3 mail via K9 as a proxy
- K9 gets the message first and examines it
- If it finds it to be spam it adds a header item which reads:
X-Text-Classification: spam
- Then OL gets the message and I have a rule that looks for the mark
- If the mark is found the message is permanently deleted

Now with OL2003 it seems to work as follows:
- When OL gets the message it checks it by itself
- Then it classifies some as junk and moves them to Junk Folder
- These messages are then not sent to the rules processing
- The remaining messages are checked by my rules

The result is that since OL2003 is so much less efficient it discovers
about 20% of the already spam marked messages as junk and sends them
to the Junk Folder. Then the 80% remaining will disappear thanks to my
rule. But this still fills my junk folder with unwanted stuff that I
have to manually get rid of...

Can I change the processing order so that my rules are processed first
and then the built-in junk detector takes over on the remaining
messages?
Or can I switch of the OL2003 junk detection altogether?


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[Brian Tillman]

However, now that I upgraded to OL2003 the emails that are marked as
spam no longer disappear, instead they are put into the Junk folder
and I have to manually clear them out. Is there any way I can change
this?

Microsoft changed the order of rule processing. Prior to OL 2003 SP1, I
believe, rules acted before the junk mail filter, causing many junk messages
to be moved to other folders and not treated as junk. Many people
complained to MS, so starting with SP1, the ordering was changed so that the
junk filter operates before the rules run so that more junk mail is actually
tagged as junk rather than being moved into people's folders. This
execution order is NOT user-controllable. The junk filter is moving the
messages to your junk folder before your rule ever sees it. Since it's not
in the Inbox when the rules run, your rule has nothing to do.