De-spamify Subject Lines

[the bishop]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

I agree, marking emails as non-spam really should remove the indication from the subject too.

+1 here -- it would help greatly!

[Dan L]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

I agree, marking emails as non-spam really should remove the indication from the subject too.

I think the reason this isn't currently done is because with IMAP you need to create a new copy of the message and delete the old one, rather than modifying the original. I could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

[n5bb]

I believe you are correct, Dan.

And I don't see what all the fuss is about. It is easy to change your spam settings to "custom" and remove the spam marking feature from all received messages. Or you can use the "edit as new" feature in the advanced version of the View screen to edit the subject as needed.

Adding your correspondents to your online address book allows address book whitelisting to keep nearly all desired messages away from your Junk Mail folder and eliminates the spam marking.

Bill

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by n5bb

And I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Because restoring the subject line is "the right thing to do" when marking something as non-spam. It is (what I believe) what people would expect.
For short: usability.

[ppm]

I am afraid that N5BB, although making a helpful comment, actually missed the precise meaning of this thread's request.

Indeed, we still want to see the Spam marking in the header of junk mails so as to be able to quickly and "visually" identify the level of "Spamminess" of likely junk mails.

However, once a "wrongly labeled junk mail" has been identified as being in reality "non junk", it would be great if the "this is not spam" button would not only (1) enrich the spam detection database and (2) move that mail to the normal intray, but also (3) automatically remove the "Spam" reference from its header.

[markhd]

Originally Posted by n5bb

As mentioned nearly two years ago in this thread, you can remove all such spam subject labels yourself. You do this in the Options>Spam/Virus Protection screen by changing to Custom mode and customizing your spam subject marking settings.

Bill

Bill: sorry, but but that does not solve the problem: how do you change the subject of an already received, already marked email message? That is what I want, i.e., for cases where the marking didn't work out because the rules identifying the email as spam incorrectly judged nonspam as spam. Reread the suggestion: I think you'll find that's what the request was. Thanks.

[FastMailFan]

Just want to add my desire to see such a feature ... and like others, agree that marking the message as non-spam should move it to my inbox AND remove that spam label in the subject line.

When displaying a mailbox, it already severly limits the subject characters displayed - that spam label makes it worse.

[jswright61]

I also agree - report non-spam should do all of the following:

• Remove Spam in subject header if it exists
• Move message to inbox if not already there
• Train message as non spam (this currently happens)

In the case of learning spam folders utilized by imap clients, all of the above should occur as well. It would be nice if the process could run several times per day (once every two or three hours) instead of daily. By moving the email to the inbox it would also eliminate the need to auto purge this folder.

[thomasina]

Originally Posted by n5bb

As mentioned nearly two years ago in this thread, you can remove all such spam subject labels yourself. You do this in the Options>Spam/Virus Protection screen by changing to Custom mode and customizing your spam subject marking settings.

Thanks Bill, this is something that's not at all clear in the Spam/Virus Protection Screen or in the Help window relation to spam, where it doesn't actually say that this option is not available except when Custom mode is selected. And so I was looking in vain for the "change subject checkbox".

I'd suggest that this is a feature that many non-Advanced users would like access to, while still relying on the recommended settings in the other options. Why not bring it up a level to the main screen? After all, if suspected spam is being sent to a Junk folder (and in my client this also means that it's marked in a non-permanent way) for many people there is no need to have an additional (and unchangeable) label applied to the header as well.

Incidentally, for any users of FastMail who use Outlook as a client it is in fact possible to edit Subject lines. Open the email in its own window. Select the Subject line text, edit according to your needs (say, by deleting that spam header) and then close the window, saving when prompted. I use this all the time at work for when people send me emails with unhelpful or vague or irrelevant subject lines. (And I'm planning to set up my FastMail acct in Outlook for a day just to edit the marked subject lines in non-spam that's come through in my first days of using it.)

[thomasina]

Originally Posted by jswright61

I also agree - report non-spam should do all of the following:

• Remove Spam in subject header if it exists
• Move message to inbox if not already there
• Train message as non spam (this currently happens)

In the case of learning spam folders utilized by imap clients, all of the above should occur as well. It would be nice if the process could run several times per day (once every two or three hours) instead of daily. By moving the email to the inbox it would also eliminate the need to auto purge this folder.

Oh, and I second this feature request!

[mlevin]

Originally Posted by thomasina

Oh, and I second this feature request!

It would be nice if it removed not only the spam part of the subject header but also removed the spam-level header (or whatever it is called) so other email clients don't react to the message.

[faldringham]

Has this feature been incorporated into the latest version of fastmail?

If not, I too would find it extremely useful.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by faldringham

Has this feature been incorporated into the latest version of fastmail?

No, the spam marking feature still defaults to marking such messages. But as I described earlier in this thread, you can set up your Fastmail account so that you will never see this spam mark on your Junk Mail messages. Do the following:

• First you should add your normal contacts to your online address book. This will prevent messages from those persons or services being accidentally classified as spam.
• Then you can go to the Options>Spam/Virus Protection screen and change your Spam Protection level to Custom. Then change your Possible Spam settings to remove the spam warning message. Be sure to select Save settings to finish.

Bill

[faldringham]

Bill, thanks for your suggestion.
I did read this thread in its entirety before posting above.

The problem with your approach, if i understand it correctly, is that it takes away the ability to use the spam ratings. I find it helpful to see the spam ratings in the subject lines of messages that the software has judged possible spam. I use the ratings in deciding whether to mark something not-spam. If I were to change the spam screening rules to not show the spam rating in the subject line, I would lose that bit of very useful information.

What is sorely needed is the option of having the software screen the message, mark the subject line of possible spam as such with the spam rating (or tag these messages in some other way that is readily recognized without having to open them), then remove the spam header once the user determines that the message is not spam.

[n5bb]

I use the spam markings myself. But I have nearly zero false positives (good messages wrongly classified as spam). This is due to:

• I use address book whitelisting, and on every received message I add desired senders to my address book if they are not already present. The [Add] link which appears after the From header when the address is not found makes this very easy. This means that the only possible false positives are from new addresses I have never seen, and very few of these are classified as spam so the problem is insignificant.
• I also use per-user Bayes filtering, and regularly mark spam and non-spam automatically. There is very little need to do this manually, since I specify the Junk Mail folder to auto-learn as spam and auto-purge after 7 days, and I specify the Inbox (and common folders where I file desired messages) to auto-learn as non-spam. So even if one of the companies or friends who regularly send me messages changes their address, their first new message will get a favorable Bayes rating and will not be classified as spam. Then I will add the new address to my address book.
• So I have my spam settings reasonably strict:
  • Address book whitelisting enabled.
  • Spam with a score >5 is discarded.
  • Probable spam with a score >1 is moved to Junk Mail
  • Possible spam with a score >1 is marked with the score
  • Backscatter is discarded
  • The one forwarding service I use (and my ISP forwarding) are listed as Trusted Hosts
  • Bayes database: I have learned about 8,000 spam and 21,000 non-spam. The only way I was able to get that many spam was by not discarding any and removing a couple of spam rules I normally use for a few spam senders. After I had plenty of spam processed I tightened up my spam rules again.
• I have my own domain, and this seems to attract a lot of spam. But I host the DNS records at Fastmail, and recently the spam has been reduced for some reason. I only received 13 spam messages in the past week, and about half of those were received on one day -- I wonder why? If I relaxed my strict deletion of messages with a spam score >5 I would get many more.
• At one time, I was getting several spam per hour, and it was a pain to look through these for false posititives. But with careful use of address book whitelisting and the Bayes filter I now only get a couple of spam retained per day. To my knowledge, I have never lost a non-spam message due to automatic deletion, and I receive no more than one or two spam in my Inbox every week. These are undesired messages which don't look like typical spam.

Bill