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Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 10:55 am
by Bill H
I have been using Thunderbird for quite a while and liked it very well. My computer crashed so I am setting up a new one, so I downloaded and installed the latest version of Thunderbird (3.1.6), only to find it buggy and unusable for my purpose.

I use webmail to filter spam before downloading desired emails from my server, so I use my email client only to send mails and to download incoming mails that I have previewed as keepers. Thunderbird has checkboxes to "check for mail" at startup and at intervals, but it turns out they are merely cosmetic, as it makes the check and downloads mails at startup and every ten minutes regardless of the status of these checkboxes. I went to their support site and it turns out quite a lot of people are making that same complaint and no solutions have been offered.

Does anyone know how to make Thunderbird stop downloading emails, or have suggestions for an email client? I'm using Windows 7 now, any experience with that client?

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 8:30 pm
by josh
gmail?

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 9:17 pm
by Jonah Bron
My preference is Evolution. That's my business email. Gmail is my personal email. I'm on Ubuntu, but there is a Windows version now.

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2010 1:45 am
by matthijs
But what's the problem then, besides this - in my eyes - small bug?

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:28 am
by Bill H
matthijs wrote:But what's the problem then, besides this - in my eyes - small bug?
Small? I get several hundred pieces of spam per day, and they arrive continuously. Having an email client that does not allow me to filter that spam on the server and keep it off of my own computer is a small problem? Having an email client that keeps beeping and signaling while I am composing mail, despite my best efforts to tell it not to, is a somewhat lesser problem, but still one that I don't want to put up with.

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2010 4:48 pm
by Doug G
Having an email client that does not allow me to filter that spam on the server and keep it off of my own computer is a small problem?
Email clients don't filter spam at the server, email servers do that. Email clients filter spam that has already been received in your computer from the server. Perhaps you should be working on the server side to get your spam pre-filtered.

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:18 am
by matthijs
@Bill: with small bug I meant the fact that Thunderbird is supposedly checking for new email every 10 minutes even if you didn't want that. Of course I don't call receiving loads of spam a small bug: that's annoying.

As others said: the first line of defense is on the mail server. My own webhosts have certain spamfilters in place which filter out the most spam.

Then the second layer of defense is Thunderbird itself. It does have a spamfilter, which for me has always worked very well. 95% of the spam goes straight to the junk box, I never have to see it. Thunderbird has also a setting which allows the program to learn what spam is and isn't. So in the beginning the filtering is not so good but it gets better in time. You can find it under Preferences > Security > Junk

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 10:20 am
by Bill H
Doug G wrote:
Having an email client that does not allow me to filter that spam on the server and keep it off of my own computer is a small problem?
Email clients don't filter spam at the server, email servers do that. Email clients filter spam that has already been received in your computer from the server. Perhaps you should be working on the server side to get your spam pre-filtered.
I do that. I view the mail on the server using webmail, and delete the spam. Then I open the email client on my desktop and download the email which remains on the server, that which I looked at and determined was not spam. No "rules" determining what was and was not kept, etc. My own "Eyeball Mark 1, Mod 0" doing the work.

Using the email client to compose emails when it is checking for mail creates a problem, in that I may be composing several mails and may spend more than ten minutes. I also may decide to send a message but don't wish to check for messages at the moment. I open the client and start to compose and the damned thing downloads a ton of spam, because I didn't do the webmail check first.

It's not a small problem, and Thunderbird in it's present form is not useable.
Then the second layer of defense is Thunderbird itself. It does have a spamfilter, which for me has always worked very well. 95% of the spam goes straight to the junk box,
But it's still on my computer.

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 10:56 am
by josh
If this much spam is making it to the client, the server side filter is no good. Spamassasin 'learns' as well - and in my experience is going to catch most spam. Typically it modifies the header of the message and then may retain it in the inbox. Your web client may then be downloading the messages, and using spamassasin's score as a factor.

Spamassasin & postfix can be configured to not retain messages that score over a certain threshold. You should get used to these so you can write filters. In Gmail there is a GUI for this. Without gmail the only way I know of is postfix (Eg. lets say a script kiddie finds and insecure "tell a friend" script that allows 10 emails, and doesn't validate for duplicates - all the sudden someone has their own personal mail server to attack yours with, and you should be prepared for these kinds of attacks, and be able to null route their emails)

Re: Email client suggestion request, or Thunderbird solution

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 10:58 am
by matthijs
You shouldn't have to go to webmail to manually delete spam. There should be some kind of automatic spamfilter in place.

Also, the junk messages that do come through to your mail client (thunderbird) go to the spam box immediately. You don't have to do anything about that. In one of the settings you can set how fast they have to be deleted, immediately or in X days (again automatically). I don't see what's the problem with that, it's all in the background

What you could also do:
- create a new email account. Often once an email address has been harvested (never put your mail address online!), the spam keeps flowing in. I have kept my addresses fairly secret and have little spam problems. I do have one gmail "junk" email address which I use to sign up for forums, mailing lists, fill in at forms, etc. That mail address does get lots of spam. However, because it's a gmail account I never get to see the junk because it's filtered very well by Google.

- create a gmail filter. Let all your email be forwarded to a new gmail account. Then let the gmail account send through the mail again to another account. This way gmail filters (almost) all spam, while you still can use thunderbird or any other mail client to read mail locally.