Overly agressive filtering by Windows Mail on Low Setting - a BIG problem and a suggested solution.

[Al]

1. I receive a lot of email from mailing lists that are NOT newsgroups in
the technical sense. In my very limited (a couple hours up with the august
build but several hundred pieces of mail) experience with Windows Mail, I'm
getting way too many false positives - good mail in the junk folder.

2. This is on the low setting. I'd hate to see what the high setting did.
The low setting also had false negatives but that is to be expected.

3. SUGGESTION - Windows Mail has has blocked senders / safe senders lists.
They are absolutely useless in this situation because the number of senders
is so large. (I am assuming that a safe sender is one whose name is on the
From line.)

What is needed in this case is a blocked recipients / safe recipients list.
I could then enter a mailing list address or domain name as a safe
recipient and be done with it.

Alternatively, it could be a bit more list centric and allow for the entry
of safe and blocked lists.

None of this is easy. Even contents of the From line is not allways good. In
the best of all possible worlds, a user could bring up an email message, and
click on a command that says this is from a safe mailing list. Windows Mail
could then examine the headers for things that it could use to match in the
future.

Unfortunately the lists that I belong two are not Microsoft owned, so I
don't even know the way that MSN communities work. But I'll be blunt. The
anti-trust boys and girls will have a field day if MSN community email makes
it through the filters and those from competative operations don't.

Given that I save roughly 100 MB of mail per day, if this isn't fixed I'll
go back to doing it the OE way. Turn off junk mail filtering, through in a
message rule or two, and wear down the delete key.

If Microsoft personnel care to contact me on this I'd be happy to supply
more details.

BTW: enter "safe sender email" into the help search in Windows Mail. The
results are NOT amusing. They continue to argue for Microsoft buying out
google, firing the folk at Microsoft who work on search and letting the
google folk take that over. I have yet to meet an MS search engine that
holds a candle to google, and from conversations I've had neither have MS
road warriors

Hmmm .... on further reflection I see a possible solution. I'll try using
the mail rules to route the stuff. UNFORTUNATELY message rules don't allow
you to route to the Inbox. Also it remains to be seen how mail rules
interact with the junk mail filter.

Here's hoping its not to late to remedy this.

Regards,
Al Christoph
Three Bears Software, LLC
Microsoft Certified Partner, ISV
just right software @ just right prices @ 3bears.biz
Working to have Windows Mail tools ready for Vista Launch

 

[Steve Cochran]

Try using a message rule based upon the To field and not the from field.
That should let you discriminate the listserver or whatever messages.

steve

 

[Al]

Thanks for the response. You are correct that works perfectly.

UNFORTUNATELY, it doesn't help. The message mail rules are applied AFTER the
junk mail filter.

This morning 100% of my incoming messages appeared in the junk mail
folder!!!!!!!!!!! When I unmarked them they went to the folder I had
specified. There as a moment of panic because I'd forgotten this last bit

SUGGESTIONS TO MICROSOFT LURKERS which should be easy to implment before
release if your coders are as good as this here duffer.
1. Apply the message rules before the junk filter, at least optionally or if
junk filter is set on low, or some such compromise.
2. Allow message rules to send stuff to the inbox.
3. Allow the "Mark as not junk" command to work on multiple messages. You
have to press it once for each message.

Here is a suggestion for the long haul. The help makes it pretty clear that
the "mark as not junk" does not train the junk filter. Since that is what
competative products do, since that is what code avialable on sourceforge
does, it really ought to be part of what "mark as not junk" does. I know you
want to encourage users to buy Outlook rather than use Windows Mail. BUT
when you call an OS "Ultimate" you have

1) Misused the english language because Ultimate is defined as
(a.) Farthest; most remote in space or time; extreme; last; final.
(b) Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or
separation; constituent; elemental; as, an ultimate constituent of matter.
This is hardly MS's last operating system, nor, is it incapable of further
analysis, as demonstrated here

2) Promised way more than you have delivered, at least when it comes to
something as fundamental during the past 10 years as email.

I'm stuck with Windows Mail because my company's product is based on doing
nifty things with Outlook Express now and Web Mail in the future. I guess,
if this is not fixed, you have added another feature for my product.

Regards,
Al
who is turning of junk mail filtering until someone has a suggestion on how
to make it work.

 

[Al Christoph]

More information for any Microsoft Personnel who might be lurking:
The lists that I belong to send out in at least two different formats. The
owner of one of the lists has managed to suppress all the decoration that
the list sponsor likes to add to postings. The messages from that list make
it through. The rest get consituted as junk.

This seems to suggest that the filter is working from content rather than
headers.

Regards,
Al