Junk Mail Filters

I think one of the coolest features of Mozilla Mail is the junk mail filters. I've got a lot of them worked out, but one I'd like and haven't been able to figure out is how to filter out any messages that don't have today's date. It's become really common to see spam that's dated a few days in the future, so that it stays at the top of the inbox queue.

Is there a way to refer to something being "not equal to today's date" in the Mozilla filter system?

 

Hi bentley,

Have you tried this:

In the Filter Rules:
First Tab: Date
2nd Tab: Is after
3rd Tab: 6/17/04

Then enable:
Move to Folder: Junk on mail.isp.net
Set Junk Status to: Junk

Ramona

 

"not equal to today's date "

It would be nice if filters would take advantage of "always available info" via the operating system. Such as "system date" and "file types ". Would allow more control to filter management. The problem to a "fixed date ", the rule is just that. The need is to monitor the dynamic changing date.... which for "bentley" would be "greater than" current date.

 

Dennis,

I was just getting ready to reply to bentley, as what I suggested is so far moving all incoming mail to the Junk folder... Now I'm going to try "isn't" and see if that is successful. He has no doubt tried some of this himself... More options would indeed be wonderful!

Ramona

P.S. After sending several messages to myself, at least the "isn't" selection doesn't send today's Mail to the Junk Folder...

 

Hi Ramona

My guess "is after" may not be an math expression, but rather a "position expression" when it reads the field in the file. Will see tommorrow for isn't. If it is "reading and comparing" the date value correctly, all of tomorrows emails will be sent to "Junk "... unless you change the date ... everyday.... sorry ... ... Try any date (previous or future) to test if it actually reads the date.
What filters require is a more robust query type program and more information provided from the OS. Query type programs are primarily a way to sort / present information contained in a file... from a field level.... which is what filters currently do, just not robust enough.

 

Thanks Dennis,

Setting the date to 6/16/2004 puts the message in the Junk folder, using the "isn't" setting, so apparently the filter does compare the date value. Of course I would have to change the date daily if using the current date! BIG FAT DUH!

I set it to "Is after ", and we'll see what happens...

Ramona

 

I set it to "Is after ", and we'll see what happens...

The problem remains... You need a dynamic update (current date), but filters only provides a static field (fixed date). If it can correctly read your inputted 6/17/2004... all emails received 6/18 or later (Is after) will go to Junk folder. With current tools available in filters, I'm not aware of a solution sorry.
Has anyone tried / used the "Custom Headers" option.
1st question - What fields in the email header can be used / monitored.

 

Hi Dennis,

Yep, that one won't work either, so I just deleted the filter. I will have to read up on the bayesian filter, because I know not what to do with the Custom Headers option...

Sorry for the confusion, bentley!

Ramona

 

No confusion at all. You'd basically discovered exactly what I had, and in just about the same rather inconvenient ways. My first attempts with this were to get rid of things with last year's dates, which seemed to be a fairly common trick there for a while. Now the spam-force has discovered that tomorrow and the next day are easier to use and obviously much harder to filter out!

What I was hoping for was something like an "@today" or "@now" function to check with the system's date and time, and just direct all the messages that are arriving on future-time into the Junk folder.

BTW, Bentley is definitely a non-denominational name, but in fact I'm a "she ". Not that it matters, of course!

 

À l'effet contraire, ma cherie! It matters a great deal!

Ramona

 

Just a thought, I can't test this, but try the filter "AGE IN DAYS" "IS LESS THAN" "0" ZERO for junk that is post dated. If Mozilla does the math correctly, a post dated e-mail should have a negative age in days.

 

I hadn't come back to this thread in months, but I've been looking for junk mail filter rules lately and rediscovered it. And that AGE IN DAYS filter works really well. Thanks!

 

JGB,

Way to go! I totally missed that award winning post, but you certainly did figure this one out. Thank you for the fix!

Ramona

 

Thanks for the kudo.

Many years ago I did something similar to get around a stupid s/w limitation in some major package, that is, specifying a negative number when zero did not work, but should have.

Thought it may work here, and lucked out. (in??)

I based my original work-around from years of s/w testing where I routinely put in values that test the limits in input fields and some resultant computations. A lot of programmers (young and old) fail to adequately guard against deliberate or inadvertant out of limit or illogical entries/results, most commonly "divide by zero "

In this case, specifying a "less than zero" age should have generated a legitimate error msg.

 

Does anybody have a filter that works reliably for a blank subject line? I've tried " " and leaving the line blank, but they still seem to slip through.

I was actually hunting for a thread on Mozilla's junk mail filter "rules" somewhere when I came back to this thread.

 

I too get junk with blank subjects and blank body. However, some legit (but forgetful) senders forget to put in a subject line (Moz will not allow that, but IE & OX do), and occassionally some just send me an attachment without so much as a "Hi! ". So I don't, as a rule, junk blank subject or body e-mails.

However, if BOTH are blank, then I would junk it. But alas, as you have found, I cannot figure out how to specify "blank" as a match item.

Nor can I test such an e-mail, because if I send a blank to me, or have someone send me a blank, my sender filter allows those senders through.