3.0.2 - will not learn good

kcossabo · November 27, 2023, 12:46pm

I have a set of emails that SpamSieve will not treat as good.

I go to the SPAM folder, find 'WDW News" and highlight, mark as good, it moves to the inbox. Repeat for 5 days, still goes to the JUNK folder.

I get reports from my NAS, once agin, mark as good, and they are day after day in the JUNK Folder.

I do have two Mac, one personal one work, email to both. Work’s is set to Outlook, no Apple Mail, Personal has only Apple Mail, and this is where the filtering is occurring (I assume).

How do I improve SpamSieve? I had/have 90+ Junk a day, about 110+ Get push to the JUNK folder, so only thing SpamSieve is doing is moving my hunting for the 30 good in the inbox, to hunting for 20 good in the JUNK box.

Michael_Tsai · November 27, 2023, 2:05pm

Is it going to Junk or Spam? Or both?

Is SpamSieve only installed on the personal Mac?

It sounds like this is probably not happening because of SpamSieve. There’s more information here.

kcossabo · November 29, 2023, 6:22am

Is it going to Junk or Spam ? Or both?

Spam

Is SpamSieve only installed on the personal Mac?

yes, Office is set to Outlook only (corporate email), Personal to Apple Mail (me.com and gmail). Gmail is the most effected by this non-learning.

Michael_Tsai · November 29, 2023, 2:35pm

Have you checked the background colors in Apple Mail to see whether the messages are being classified as spam by SpamSieve?

Also, normally SpamSieve will move messages to Junk, not Spam. This will be automatic when using the Mail extension setup, of if you’re using the Mail plug-in setup you should select the All Junk mailbox in the SpamSieve rule in Apple Mail.

There should normally not be a Spam mailbox visible in Mail. That means that either you have an extra mailbox that can be deleted or that the server junk filter’s mailbox is not properly selected.

kcossabo · November 30, 2023, 12:55pm

you are correct it is spam.

Is there a way to have SpamSieve color all messages it moves? Does the “color the background according to how spammy it is:” always change the color?

This would help me understand what is moving the mail.

for now, I am having SpamSieve move to a new folder on the server (two mail servers Apple and Google, each has the folder).

I am unclear if this is JUST my trained email or all intercepted email.

Thank You for the support.

Michael_Tsai · November 30, 2023, 1:45pm

Yes, that option always changes the background color. So if you don’t see a background color it was not moved by SpamSieve.

You can also look in the Log window. Any message moved by SpamSieve will say Predicted: Spam.

I’m not sure what “this” refers to here.

kcossabo · December 1, 2023, 12:39pm

I am having SpamSieve move to a new folder on the server (two mail servers Apple and Google, each has the folder). I am unclear if this option to move to a different folder will JUST my trained email or all intercepted email (aka spamy email that I did not mark a bad)

Michael_Tsai · December 1, 2023, 1:23pm

If you’re using the Mail extension setup, SpamSieve will always move the incoming spam messages to Junk or Trash. However, you can configure in Mail which IMAP mailboxes those map to.

kcossabo · December 4, 2023, 12:54pm

I was missing the sedulity of this.

will always move the incoming spam messages to Junk or Trash .
yet
you can configure in Mail which IMAP mailboxes

So the feature

does what?

Watching today, and this is what I observed.

Apple Mail was closed
opened Apple Mail and the gmail-spam folder was filled with email all orange
I clicked on a report that is not SPAM, click train Good
then in a blink, they change to white
the email with the report disappears, reappears as orange, then disappears (Assuming in my inbox)
the google junk folder has email from ‘auto-reply@usps.com’ in ORANGE, that has been marked ‘train as good’, which I will repeat today.

At this point, 3 minutes after opening Mail, I have in the gmail spam folder

white messages, assume gmail’s spam moved them there
ORANGE that should be there
ORANGE that I have trained as good, but will give it yet another try.

OT: Thinking back this issue started I upgraded. There was a feature or something that wold look at the whole Apple MAIL database, and filter. That really moved a lot of mail around. My current hypothisis is that when SpamSieve moved the BULK load to gmail Spam folder, GMail started to filter aggressively (the white messgaes), as to it’s logic I MOVED the messages to the spam box, so I WANT them SPAM, and it was this bulk move.

All of the gmail’s new errors are marked

Why is this message in spam?

It is similar to messages that were identified as spam in the past.

Now I am going to gmail.com and making good (white messages) for emails in the spam.

This does not change the fact that I am sure this is the 5th or 20th time telling SpamSieve the USPS Delivery email is NOT SPAM.

Thank You for the ongoing attention.

Michael_Tsai · December 4, 2023, 3:59pm

This controls what happens when you select a message and choose Train as Spam. The settings on the Filtering tab control what happens when SpamSieve automatically filters an incoming message.

Are you referring to the text color or to the background color?

What does SpamSieve’s Log window say about these messages?

There is no such feature. SpamSieve filters:

New, incoming messages.
Messages that you select and choose Filter Messages.
Unread messages in mailboxes that you selected for Filter spam messages in other mailboxes, but it tells you to read any old messages before enabling this.

I don’t know what this refers to. Marked how?

If they are not SpamSieve mistakes, you can just use the Not Junk command in Mail. There’s no need to go to gmail.com.

Does the Log window say that SpamSieve predicted it to be spam?

kcossabo · December 5, 2023, 1:17pm

Thank You for all the support on this, but I think we are in a debate, with me unable to assist SpamSieve on understanding how their product blew up my mail.

YES, Orange means the background color, indicate, I assume that SpamSieve moved it not Good MAIL

With Respect To

This controls what happens when you select a message and choose Train as Spam . The settings on the Filtering tab control what happens when SpamSieve automatically filters an incoming message.

So " will always move the incoming spam messages to Junk or Trash ." is not true it will if this setting is not set?

I did not analyze the log before, did not know it was there. Thank You for pointing me to it. I can see why SpamSieve is getting confused on a few of the emails. Before investing in SpamSieve I attempted to create large rules based on junk senders. To do this I added the junk sender to my contacts. SpamSieve is seeing this and, rightly, assuming it to be good. I need to fix this.

Summary:	You trained this message as Spam from your mail client.
Prediction:	SpamSieve had predicted this message to be Good, and you corrected the mistake. SpamSieve classified this message as Good because its sender was in your Contacts.
Score:	0 (0 is least spammy; 100 is most spammy)
Accuracy:	Mistake (False Negative, i.e. SpamSieve classified as Good, but you trained as Spam)

With Respect To the BULK move to Gmail. I took the time to read back through the release noted for your clarification on the feature.

3.0.1—October 19, 2023
6.3.1.1 Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension

The Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension option is a workaround for this bug. It automatically filters all of your inboxes, without your having to configure anything. Just make sure that option is checked in the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Setup window and make sure that SpamSieve has Full Disk Access. (Without Full Disk Access, the feature will still work, but it will be slower and report an error for mailboxes containing more than 5,000 messages.)

When I enabled the above, all of my mailboxes in GMail started to reduce unread counts, and the SPAM folder FLOODED with new unread messages. This is the point that where I started to hated SpamSieve as all my messages were in SPAM. Since then, with your assistance. If the above was not to do this, or, there is no faith that it did, do not worry, I know it did, it is not doing it now, it was a singular event when I installed the update, and picked the feature. I am well on my way to figuring out how to untangle this mess.

1 - WHITE Messages were moved there after this date by Gmail, not SpamSieve, and I have been going to Gmail to train it not to filter the false positives.
2 - ORANGE Emails in the spam folder seem to be going there that are not SPAM, I have now been training as good

I am getting a number of these

Summary:	SpamSieve filtered the inboxes in Apple Mail.
Error Code:	-10,000
Log Entry:	Error finding inboxes to check (account: <unknown>): Mail got an error: AppleEvent handler failed.
Date Logged:	Today, 2:46:42 AM

SpamSieve:	3.0.2 at /Applications/SpamSieve.app
Device:	macOS 14.1.2 (23B92) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2)
User:	kcossabo (Kevin Cossaboon)
Language:	English

Every hour or so.

kcossabo · December 5, 2023, 1:31pm

When I turned the feature on my Gmail ‘Inbox’ dropped from ten thousand plus to 40 unread and the ‘Junk’ Folder jumped to 26 thousand plus.

kcossabo · December 5, 2023, 1:38pm

second edit, ad I can not edit the above

When I turned the feature on my Gmail ‘Inbox’ dropped from ten thousand plus to 40 unread and the ‘Junk’ Folder jumped to 26 thousand plus.

I do see logs of

Summary:	SpamSieve 3.0.1 launched on macOS 14.0.0 (23A344) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2).
Help:	Does SpamSieve launch automatically?
Date Logged:	Sunday, November 12, 2023, 11:08:14 AM

SpamSieve:	3.0.1 at /Applications/SpamSieve.app
Device:	macOS 14.0.0 (23A344) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2)
User:	kcossabo (Kevin Cossaboon)
Language:	English

then pages of these

Summary:	SpamSieve filtered the inboxes in Apple Mail.
Error Code:	-12,345
Log Entry:	Skipping filtering inbox of account “Gmail” because it contains too many messages: 31946. Try moving some old messages to a different mailbox.
Date Logged:	Sunday, November 12, 2023, 11:10:16 AM

SpamSieve:	3.0.1 at /Applications/SpamSieve.app
Device:	macOS 14.0.0 (23A344) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2)
User:	kcossabo (Kevin Cossaboon)
Language:	English

at the time of the install

These Continued with

Summary:	SpamSieve filtered the inboxes in Apple Mail.
Error Code:	-12,345
Log Entry:	Skipping filtering inbox of account “Gmail” because it contains too many messages: 32502. Try moving some old messages to a different mailbox.
Date Logged:	Sunday, November 19, 2023, 1:02:05 PM

SpamSieve:	3.0.1 at /Applications/SpamSieve.app
Device:	macOS 14.0.0 (23A344) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2)
User:	kcossabo (Kevin Cossaboon)
Language:	English

When I installed the update

Summary:	SpamSieve 3.0.2 launched on macOS 14.0.0 (23A344) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2).
Help:	Does SpamSieve launch automatically?
Date Logged:	Sunday, November 19, 2023, 1:02:54 PM

SpamSieve:	3.0.2 at /Applications/SpamSieve.app
Device:	macOS 14.0.0 (23A344) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2)
User:	kcossabo (Kevin Cossaboon)
Language:	English

After this point, the log shows just normal spam autotraining

Summary:	SpamSieve classified this message as Spam and auto-trained it.
Corpus Change:	Added message to Spam corpus (106 total)
Date Logged:	Sunday, November 19, 2023, 1:06:43 PM

Subject:	Give a gift they'll really love
From:	Roku <roku@email.roku.com>
Date Sent:	Sunday, November 12, 2023, 4:55:34 PM
Date Received:	Sunday, November 12, 2023, 4:55:40 PM
To:	kevin@cossaboon.net
Size:	185 KB (35 KB compressed)
Identifier:	OBYWD7xv9MVe8P7CJOdnNg==
Server Filter:	There is no record of a server junk filter evaluating this message. Some mail servers don’t have junk filters, and some filters move messages to a different mailbox without noting in the message that they did this.
Origin:	Gmail (IMAP) ‣ [Gmail] ‣ All Mail in Mail 16.0 (filter inboxes)

Processing Time:	0.102s
SpamSieve:	3.0.2 at /Applications/SpamSieve.app
Device:	macOS 14.0.0 (23A344) on kevins-mac-studio.local (Mac13,2)
User:	kcossabo (Kevin Cossaboon)
Language:	English

except for the errors mentioned above.

Michael_Tsai · December 5, 2023, 2:10pm

Yes, that’s what I would expect unless you have created your own rule that changes the color to orange.

The part in bold is always true. The settings on the Training tab do not affect filtering incoming messages. They only apply to when you manually train a message.

I doubt this for a few reasons:

First, I want to clarify, but it sounds like you’re saying (given your later comments with the log excerpts) that the problem occurred when you were running 3.0.1, not 3.0.2. With 3.0.1, the Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension feature did not process inboxes with more than 5,000 messages, which it sounds like you had.
Second, in order to avoid reprocessing/moving large amounts of old mail, Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension skips all messages that were received before you installed SpamSieve and enabled this feature.

If you find one of the old messages in the log, it will say (in the Origin) whether it was processed because of this feature. My guess is that it was not.

There’s a related feature, Filter spam messages in other mailboxes, that does process all old messages (if they’re unread). This requires opting in by specifically selecting the mailboxes that you want it to filter, and it warns you to read any old messages before doing so if you don’t want them to be filtered.

It’s important to correct all the mistakes. If lots of old messages were processed incorrectly, that will cause SpamSieve to learn lots of information that isn’t true, so you would need to either reset it or tell it that it got those messages wrong.

I doubt this is related to the main issue of this thread, but we can dig into it privately if you want. In brief, it looks like Mail is reporting an error when reading one of your inboxes, probably on every check for new mail, but SpamSieve is throttling the reporting to once per hour.

So, at this point, Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension was not doing anything.

Did you find any log entries from the big batch of messages that were incorrectly moved?

kcossabo · December 5, 2023, 3:56pm

So, chasing something that might not matter, but, I went to Apple Mail, and looked at the Gmail Junk folder, scrolled way back and the following.

I NEVER used a color background on an email, besides “Important” and leaving them in my Inbox.

Your software moved the mail, that movement, trained Gmail Spam filter to start grabbing email as “you previously moved a similar message to Junk”

I Have NEVER moved junk to gmail Junk, I, prior to invsting in SpamSieve, added junk emails to very long filters to move the messages (no color change) to mailbox folders called, mailers. (this is why I have junk senders in my address book), but they went to specific mail boxes not to JUNK.

This column of colored email in the Gmail Junk folder back to 2/9/21 and with the coloring of blue, grey, with occasional yellow and red up to 11/5/23 (minor exceptions in this list of less than 20 in over 20,000 emails)

At 11/5/23 the Junk folder emails colors slow down with white background emails, and if I go to gmail web and click on them, gmail claims that it is junk as I previously moved email to the junk folder of similar type.

I installed the Updates
I turned on the feature
Apple Mail was drained all the way back to 2021, with emails color changed and moved to Junk
This trained Gmail to filter my emails “Previously moved”

I am sorry if it does not seem probable to you, but I Had no reason to take 25,000+ emails, randomly color them Grey or Blue and move them to the Junk Folder. I firmly believe that the hundreds of log messages like this

was SpamSieve moving the messages, coloring them, and thus training gmail’s spam filter.

Current state is that

SpamSieve seems to now be training correctly.
Gmail is aggressively moving false positives to Junk with " Why is this message in spam? It is similar to messages that were identified as spam in the past." Because of the previous Bulk move
I need to check and train gmail on the false positives.

Michael_Tsai · December 5, 2023, 4:30pm

I’m not saying you did that. I’m guessing that you enabled the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature and selected your inbox to be filtered without first marking the old messages as read.

That is definitely not the case. These Error log entries are saying that the Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension did not do anything—it tried to but encountered an error. But, even without the error, I don’t think it would have touched these old messages because they were received before this feature was activated.

If SpamSieve did move a message to Junk (which, based on the coloring, it seems like it did), there would be a Predicted: Spam log entry. And the Origin section of the log entry will say which SpamSieve feature caused it to filter that message.

To me, the main issues are:

How did this bulk filtering happen?
Why did SpamSieve think the messages were spam?

Finding the Predicted: Spam log entries would help answer these questions.

What to do going forward. You say that you need to train Gmail on the false positives, but it seems to me that you should instead be training SpamSieve, which will also train Gmail as a by product of SpamSieve moving the message back to the inbox. If you don’t tell SpamSieve that the false positives are actually good, that will lead to more false positives in the future.

kcossabo · December 5, 2023, 7:48pm

Absolutely CORRECT. I did turn on the feature, I did not know that there was a requirement to mark read, and a small fraction of the email in my inbox was ‘read’.

There are ZERO “Predicted: Spam” in the Log.

gmail is moving the messages, NOT SpamSeive. The messages that are now false positives are WHITE (BACKGROUND COLOR) in the JUNK MailBox, so SpamSieve did not move them.

I go to the gmail web interface, gmail is indicating that gmail moved them base on previous moves.

What would be the procedure to have SpamSieve move the message? Go to the JUNK MailBox and train as good? I am assuming that gmail is moving them before I download, and wouldn’t un training the action of gmail great a loop?

gmail, move suspect spam to JUNK, SpamSieve, trained as good, move to inbox, gmail, move suspected as spam?

I am willing to do what ever makes the most effective way to get to a stable state.

Thank You for the assistance.

Michael_Tsai · December 5, 2023, 8:28pm

This is what the window shows:

I don’t understand how that can be, since you showed screenshots of colored messages and also a log entry that showed auto-training. Please note that you would need to find these log entries by scrolling or by searching for message content. You cannot search the Log window for text like Predicted: Spam that’s not part of a message or rule.

Well, it’s good that so far this doesn’t seem to be causing more false positives from SpamSieve.

Yes. Or you can train them in SpamSieve’s Log window if that’s easier (but this won’t move them in Mail or Gmail).

No. Gmail will know that the message isn’t new.

kcossabo · December 6, 2023, 12:59pm

Well with 43.368 logs, I am not scrolling looking for them. Why the search is there but can not be used is a miss.

kcossabo · December 6, 2023, 1:13pm

Well with 43.368 logs, I was not scrolling looking for them. Why the search is there but can not be used is a miss.

OK, your log tool only counts to 1000

I hope the video above works. I have no idea how to count them it takes 2 minutes to scroll through the list of them at high speed.