Ed Cryer <
ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:
VanguardLH wrote:
<Large snipped message; recent postings have alerted me to this>
This sure sent you on a trip around the houses. I'm sorry if my lack of precision caused that.
This is the simple scenario.
I have an old hotmail account that has been subsumed into Outlook.
Subsumed into outlook.com. Without the TLD (top-level domain),
"Outlook" means a local e-mail client: the standalone Outlook program
(often as part of the MS Office suite), or the UWP (Universal Windows
Platform) app renamed to "Outlook". Microsoft confused which is which
when they renamed Hotmail.com to Outlook.com, and renamed the Internet
Mail and News client (IMN is still in the program's msimn.exe executable
file name), and renamed their UWP app to "Outlook new" (and "new" is not capitalized). There might be other services, programs, or apps that
Microsoft confounded together by using the "Outlook" umbrella name
confusing users as to what to call whatever they meant to discuss.
outlook.com (with the TLD) is a domain name where to use a web browser
to find their webmail client along with a hub to other web apps to
access other MS services: Calendar, People (contacts), ToDo (tasks),
Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and more. Unfortunately, lots of users call
this "Outlook", because Microsoft engrained the name by saying "Outlook"
in their webmail app. Many users of local Outlook clients also think outlook.exe is "Outlook".
I can view that through their webmail (which I seldom do); but it's
easy to get it into any email client, and I do that on Windows PCs
and iPads and phones generally.
Method of connecting differs based on your Microsoft account. You might
have an MS365 subscription which grants you access using a client that
supports Exchange/Activesync. Oddly, if you use the Outlook *client*,
you also get Exchange access. Else, with no MS account or when not
using the Outlook client, you can use only POP or IMAP. Saying you see
new spam show up in the Junk/Spam folder could mean that's where it got
moved by server-side anti-spam filtering, and you're using IMAP to sync
on multiple folders at the server, so the server-side Junk folder is
also sync'ed from server to client. Or, you are using POP which means
your client is moving to its local Junk/Spam folder since POP cannot
access any folder at the server other than Inbox (POP only knows of a
mailbox which is presented to you as Inbox).
There are extensions to add Exchange support to TBird: Equilla (10 euro
per year), and Owl for Exchange ($10 euro per year). The designs of
their web sites are nearly identical which makes me suspicious they are
the same product under different vendor and extension names.
BBird, a fork of Tbird, has IMAP support, but not Exchange/Activesync.
The devs of Tbird were claiming Exchange was going to get added later
when they moved to Rust coding. That only helps MS365 subscribers if
and when TBird (and thereby BBird) adds Exchange support.
By using MS Outlook 2021 (local e-mail client), or MS Outlook app
(Android), I get Exchange access *without* having to pay for an MS 365 subscription. With IMAP, you get e-mail access only to all subscribed
folders, not just Inbox (aka mailbox) as with POP. With IMAP or POP,
you are relegated to using CalDAV to partially sync on the calendar in
your account, and CardDAV to partially sync on contacts in your account.
I say partially, because sync is only one-way, not automatically both
ways. As with extensions to add Exchange support to Tbird (and maybe
later Tbird coded in Rust will add Exchange suppot), there are
extensions that assist with CalDAV and CardDAV sync, like CalDav
Synchronizer (free).
You never mentioned sync to contacts and calendar, and BBird, like
TBird, need extensions for those, so, for now, I'm guessing you're using
IMAP in BBird to access only e-mail in your outlook.exe account.
Under Betterbird (on Windows PCs), as well as an inbox there's a spam
box (recently renamed from junk box). I presume that MS's Outlook has
sorted the wheat from the chaff; and it does so very successfully indeed.
With IMAP, there are 2 ways an e-mail ends up in the Spam folder. One
is the server-side anti-spam filtering moved an e-mail into the
server-side (in your account) Spam folder, and your IMAP client
subscribes (syncs) to the Spam folder to see what the server saw. Or,
two, your local IMAP e-mail client used its own junk filtering to move
the e-mail into its Spam folder, and with IMAP then effects the same
move up on the server.
Also a guess is that you left enabled the server-side anti-spam filter
in your outlook.com account. That means most of what you see in a local
IMAP client, like BBird, that shows up in the Spam filter was put there
by the server which then you sync'ed on the Junk folder using IMAP.
Bbird has its own junk filtering, if enabled, that merely uses Bayes,
but Microsoft's server-side filtering is more robust than Bayes. That
you suddenly see more spam could be due to a spammer suddenly spewing
out more turds in another campaign. You see more, because they decided
to spew more. When they spew is erratic. Whether your e-mail address
got harvested from a website, or somewhere you published it could be one
way you see the spam. Or, they simply went through a dictionary attack
of lots of usernames at common domains (hotmail.com, outlook.com,
gmail.com, yahoo.com, icloud.com, <ISP>.com, etc).
When a spammer decides on another spam campaign, it can a while for
anti-spam filters on the e-mail servers to catch up. Until they
recognize the spam, it won't get filtered. They may look at the
content, or the headers to determine the source. During a mail session
(not later) the receiving server knows the sending server which may have
a bad reputation, or is a known spam source. When using a local e-mail
client where you, your rules, or a junk filter within your client moves
a spam from the Inbox to the Spam folder, this does not reflect any spam reporting to the server. It may update the Bayes filter in BBird, but
not the spam filter working on your server-side account. To update the
spam filter on the server requires you use their webmail client to flag
ham as spam. winston may know this remains true for outlook.com. With
IMAP, and junk filtering enabled in the client, hard to know just who is
moving what into the Junk filter. With junk filtering disabled in the
client, any e-mails in the Spam folder were moved there by the server.
With a brand new spam campaign, neither the server nor client may
recognize the new turds until they've been taught regarding the content
or source. Server junk filtering can look at the source. Bayes
filtering in Bbird does not without using extensions.
Unlikely you will ever know if a website sold or doled out your e-mail
address to a spammer. I use a unique alias to everyone that asks for my
e-mail address; i.e., they get an aliasing address, not my true e-mail
address. If I get e-mails not from them, or spams, through a particular
alias that only they were given, I know who betrayed me. Plus, I can
kill the alias, so no more spams can through it. I wait 6 months, or
more, without any spam through an alias before I give them my true
e-mail address, or I just continue with them using an alias. When using
the same e-mail address everywhere, you can't track the abuse.
The headers in a spam sitting in the Junk folder can indicate if it got
into that folder due to server-side anti-spam filtering, or junk
filtering in the local client.
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)