Legitimate emails sent to spam folder

[aircraft]

Hi,

I have a problem where a lot of my incoming emails are being sent to the spam folder. None of these are actually spam. I have Thunderbird set up on my computer to collect my mail from Talktalk but it will only get mail from the Talktalk inbox. I keep having to log into talktalk webmail just to move my mail from Spam to Inbox.

Can you either fix your spam filtering or disable it please?

[Billx]

@MrJubbly  's suggestion above, of formal Complaints might be a good idea, @zippy1148 

Bill

[zippy1148]

All my family (and others) have the same issue. 

I created a thread and TT have failed to address it, then went quiet. The more if us to complain the more likely they will realise its a universal issue. Many people dont realise what they have missed because they don't go into webmail

[Billx]

@aircraft , @MrJubbly 

Yes, it is about time, TalkTalk/Open-Xchange got their fingers out, and dealt with this.

They already have filters in their app.

If none of the commands/filters/settings in the current version of their app, cannot disable their automatic ineffective filtering, then they better add a new command/filter/setting, that can.

Bill

[Billx]

reply to your  12-06-2025 03:02 PM comment, @aircraft 

All of my TalkTalk emails ending up in gmail.com, have an @ talktalk.co.uk email address, but when they are forwarded by gmail.com back to my TalkTalk email address, the sender of the forwarded emails, is my gmail.com email address.

Bill

[MrJubbly]

Hi @aircraft,

That's sad to hear. Was hoping that things might have moved on. I've not had much luck with adding rules, etc on out TalkTalk accounts and even so I don't really want to have to go down that route. I've seen another couple of threads on this same subject when looking for the first time today. There are probably more. If this issue doesn't get some traction soon I might go down the Customer Complaint route to see if that gets me anywhere.

Cheers,

MrJubbly

[aircraft]

@MrJubbly, no it's still ongoing. I asked early on if they could switch off spam filtering on my account but they didn't respond to that. I don't know if they have the ability to do it or not. If they could switch off spam filtering that would be great because I very rarely get any real spam and when I do it rarely gets intercepted by talktalk!

[MrJubbly]

Hi,

Has the issue reported by the OP been resolved? If so, how?

 I have the exact same problem. We are regularly getting non-spam related emails sent to the Spam folder on the TalkTalk side. We don't, and never have, logged on to TalkTalk mail to manage our mail. We simply use the likes of Outlook and Gmail (all using POP3) to download our inboxes. In Jan of this year there were some very important emails that never turned up at our end. It was then that  I logged on to out TalkTalk mail accounts, only to find that they, along with a chunk of other emails had been held up in the Spam folder. Since then I have had to login to our TalkTalk mail accounts daily to clear the Spam folders down (all of which contain legitimate emails). Frankly I'm getting tired of this now and would much prefer it if Spam 'management' (in quotes because clearly it is not being managed at all well) could be switch off at TalkTalks end and leave it up to my own apps to deal with any Spam that may come through (a rare event).

I've never had this problem with TalkTalk mail in all the years I've been with them, since this year, so something must have changed to be causing this.

Regards,

MrJubbly

[aircraft]

@ billx,

Well, I can give it a try but when email is auto-forwarded it doesn't change the from email address to 'aircraft @ mydomain.co.uk'. It leaves it as the original sender. Not like when you manually forward an email. It might help with my test emails though. Having said that, I only managed to get one test email through. Any I have done since have just disappeared and neither been delivered or bounced. It doesn't like me!

Talktalk support have now confirmed that a rule won't run on emails in the Spam folder.

[Billx]

@aircraft 

It could be what you say, about all your emails being auto-forwarded from your own domain, that you are having a much larger rate of spam. These days, the systems don't like (auto-)forwarding that much.

On the other hand, in my case, because all my TalkTalk emails end up in gmail.com (because of TalkTalk policy), I re-forward all my TalkTalk emails back to my TalkTalk webmail (back to the UK). I've made some suitable settings in gmail.com.

There hasn't been a problem getting all my TalkTalk email back into my TalkTalk webmail, even though they are forwarded.

Yes, sending test emails between more than 1 of my TalkTalk email addresses can end up in the Spam folder, but I haven't worked the rule yet.

Instead of using 'Allowlist', can you use a 'Rule'?

e.g. if From 'aircraft @ mydomain.co.uk', then File To Inbox folder

Again, I am not sure, whether it will catch it, before it goes to Spam.

Bill

[aircraft]

@Billx,

No worries!

[aircraft]

Billx,

There was a question about my email address so that was fine in a pm. Otherwise no need to be in pm.

I was asked to add incoming email addresses to my address book and then set a setting that did not send email to junk if it was in the address book. However, I pointed out that these were settings in Thunderbird and therefore wouldn't affect the issue of emails going to the webmail Spam folder. So, I pointed out my problem again and they are checking again. it was also suggested that I use a rule but I pointed out that that only works for emails in the Inbox. Once again, they are checking.

I'm beginning to think that the problem is to do with my email address. For historical reasons, I have a domain name which has always been used for my email. Where the domain is hosted, I automatically forward all emails to e.g. aircraft@mydomain.co.uk to my talktalk email address from which I collect my mail. I suspect that lots of emails (but not all) addressed to this email address are being sent to the webmail Spam folder for some reason or other. An additional symptom has been that I couldn't send an email to myself. However, I just added my own email address to the webmail Allowlist and now I when I send an email to myself, I can see that it does arrive in talktalk webmail, albeit in the Spam folder! 🙂

So I think emails addressed to my own domain and auto-forwarded to my talktalk mailbox are probably being flagged as Spam for some reason.

[Billx]

By the way way, @aircraft ,

I wish to thank you very much, for your very thorough response to all and each of my earlier questions.

Bill

[Billx]

Hi, @siphosethu-TT 

Your message at 11:18 AM  , was obviously addressed to me, even though it pointed to the original poster.

Why are these so-called PM steps so secret, that the rest of us can't see them?

Bill

[siphosethu-TT]

You can also move your emails by marking then as not spam once you've whitelisted your emails. Thanks

[aircraft]

I've sent you a pm in response to that.

[siphosethu-TT]

I had @aircraft do a few steps for me in private messages different form the steps you can see. Thanks

[Billx]

Hi, @siphosethu-TT 

Do you mean the steps given by @nambuso-TT   on ‎10-06-2025 02:09 PM  ?

In fact, that wasn't 'steps', that was 1 step.

That step has been shown to be wholly wrong, if you read the immediately above comments.

Or, do you mean some other steps?

Bill

[siphosethu-TT]

Please give feedback once you've done the steps above. Thanks

[aircraft]

I am very sorry to hear this, could you please Add our email address yourbill@billing.talktalk.co.uk to your contacts or safe senders list - this will stop any emails going to your spam or junk folder. Thanks

I am happy to do this but can you explain why on earth taking this action would have the effect you describe? i.e. stopping any emails being sent to the Spam folder. What is it, a secret code?

I've been asked to do so many irrelevant things by talktalk reps that my level of confidence is rather low.

[aircraft]

Hi Billx, I'll try to answer your points.

You already had an existing POP3 account in Thunderbird, using a TalkTalk email address

But you opened an additional IMAP account in Thunderbird.

Is this new account, using the same TalkTalk email address?  Yes

Is Thunderbird able to open both a POP3 and an IMAP account on the same email address? Yes!

When you get all your emails from the POP3 account, what if anything remains in the IMAP account? In Thunderbird in my accounts tree I see a view of the talktalk mail server - blah@talktalk.net then Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Spam, Deleted, Junk etc folders and I can see the emails list in the Inbox if I click on it. When Thunderbird collects mail (I have set both thge POP3 account and the IMAP account to get mail) emails disappears from the remote talktalk inbox and appear in my local Thunderbird Inbox. That's just what I want as I don't really want my email to sit on the talktalk server. Any emails that have been put in the talktalk Spam folder I can see if I click on the folder and can drag and drop to either inbox if required.

Also, noting that there are 6 standard folders in TalkTalk webmail,

are the only emails still left and showing in the IMAP account, all in the Spam folder? Thunderbird only collects emails from the talktalk Inbox so any emails in any other talktalk folders are left where they are and continue to be visible in the IMAP account.

Are there any emails left in any of the other folders? Potentially, say in the deleted folder if I deleted something locally on talktalk webmail or the Sent folder if I sent something using webmail. But I generally leave it fairly clean. As I say, Thunderbird will only get mail from the Inbox folder.

I am asking because a POP3 account would want to download everything, and then delete everything. Yes, which is the way I have always used email.

The IMAP would want to download everything, but leave copies of everything on the server. (a conflict?) Apparently not. When I configured the IMAP account, I set "Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer" and "Synchronise all messages locally regardless of age". When I first added the IMAP account, there was an interesting initial period where emails from my local Inbox were uploaded to the talktalk webmail Inbox before being downloaded again! I thought it would get very confused at this point but it seemed to sort itself out quite quickly and I haven't seen that behaviour again.

My level of understanding about email is not deep but the IMAP account seems to be doing roughly what I want which is give me easy access to the talktalk webmail folders so that I can see emails in the SPam folder and move them manually.

Obviously none of this fixes my original problem but it does make life more convenient. 🙂