What's wrong with spam filtering in Mail (Sierra)? How to fix it?

[GabeG]

Spam filtering has worked like a charm but now when upgraded to Sierra it works badly - most spam mails appear and even though I am marking them as spam they return day after day... Also when trying to move them to Trash there is (sometimes) a message that Trash cannot or will not receive the spam mail message. Totally weird.

 

[Just_Me_D]

I'm not using macOS Sierra, but hopefully members who are will reply soon with a remedy. Take care..

 

[weirdnoise]

I have the opposite problem. Spam filtering was working great before the update but after upgrading to Sierra many of my non-spam messages are winding up in Junk. Even after I mark them as non-junk, similar messages (e.g. newsletters, order confirmations) wind up in the Junk folder. The end result is that I see all the spam messages anyway as I scan for false-positives.

It's bad enough that I'm willing to start over with the spam-filtering algorithm and spend the next month "training" it to recognize spam. Nuking its database (after backing it up, of course) may be the only way out -- if I can find how to reset it. This might make things worse, but spam filtering is so horribly broken for me that it's worth a shot.

 

[GabeG]

Ok, the jury's still out, but I start to think my Mail after upgrading to Sierra just had reset the spam "training" and started from scratch. I also have to go through the spam box and pick out a few legitimate emails. But as time goes by and I am constantly marking the spam as spam the number of spam seems to go down in my inbox The spammers annoyingly send the same spam mails from a multitude of addresses so it will take time to clean it up again. But there is some hope now...

 

[Deleted member 488356]

Hi,

Try to update to macOS Sierra 10.12.1, see:
Apple Releases macOS Sierra 10.12.1 With Bug Fixes, Features for Upcoming Macs - Mac Rumors

 

[GabeG]

Did the update, and it seems to have fixed spam filtering for my gmail account. It filters beautifully now. But for my 2 IMAP accounts there is no improvement to be seen. Still a lot of spam - and I also have to check through the trash boxes to pick out a few legitimate mails every now and then. It has become a daily chore...