Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking "Rules" Question

I recently set up a Rule in Mail to avoid receiving junk email from a persistent sender, as it just seemed more logical than having to empty the Junk Mailbox daily.

However, I don't actually know where I've stopped this mail. My Mail application does a quick flash to indicate something has arrived but, of course, the mail doesn't get to my Inbox. I know it's the same sender because I can go to my ISP's webmail site and it will be there.

Is this safer than tagging something as Junk mail and emptying the junk mailbox each day? If so, why?

No rush, whenever someone gets a chance.

ryck

I am assuming you know that in Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox behavior you can set the junk mail box to be emptied: Never, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or when you Quit Mail which makes emptying the junk mail box completely transparent to the user.

As to where the persistent junk message goes it depends entirely on how you constructed the rule. Again I will make an assumption you either selected "Delete Message" or "Move message to Trash". If you selected "Move message to trash" it will be placed in the trash for that account and remain there until whatever interval you have selected for emptying the trash in Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behavior expires. If you selected Delete then the message is sent to that "great bit bucket in the sky" and immediately deleted from your system.

Whether or not that is safer than tagging a message as junk until the junk mail filter learns to automatically move it to the junk mailbox the end result is pretty much the same in the long run. Personally I prefer not to immediately delete junk mail of any kind because there is a very small percentage of valuable mail that gets dumped into the junk mail folder from time to time. I have my junk mail deleted weekly, which gives me a chance to check periodically to find those messages that were incorrectly routed to junk mail. I recovered an expensive application serial number that way earlier this week in fact not to mention a utility bill where the sending address had changed.

Remember you can have multiple actions for a message such as having the dock icon bounce when a particular message is received or marking the message in the junk folder as unread to flag the possibility of incorrectly junked mail.