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Thunderbird treats Facebook posting notifications as scams

  • 6 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Barry Gold

Barry Gold
Barry Gold
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I have Facebook set up to notify me when new posts are made to a thread where I've commented. For some reason, TBird treats these as scams and warns me every time I follow the link to the comments.

I can still get there, but it's annoying. I'd like an option in "filters" to mark a message as "not spam". Or something. Turning spam detection off is too radical a solution -- I do like _some_ help in avoiding phishing emails although I generally check URLs before clicking through. (More for fear of malware than because of phishing, but I still want to be careful.)

I have Facebook set up to notify me when new posts are made to a thread where I've commented. For some reason, TBird treats these as scams and warns me every time I follow the link to the comments. I can still get there, but it's annoying. I'd like an option in "filters" to mark a message as "not spam". Or something. Turning spam detection off is too radical a solution -- I do like _some_ help in avoiding phishing emails although I generally check URLs before clicking through. (More for fear of malware than because of phishing, but I still want to be careful.)

Chosen solution

Apparently the scam notification does not work too well anyway. You can turn that off in Options > Security > Email Scams.

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All Replies (6)

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Spam: If you are seeing the word 'Spam', then this is being set by either the server or some other program you are running eg: spamassassin. Thunderbird does not use the word 'Spam', it uses the word 'Junk'.

Scam: Regarding 'This message may be a scam' alert, please read info here:

Barry Gold
Barry Gold Question owner
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No, it is not being marked "Spam".

But I am seeing a yellow bar at the top of the message body, with the words "This message may be a scam." and a button "Ignore Warning".

The yellow bar also includes a red shield with a gray border and a white exclamation point in the center of the shield.

user01229325
user01229325
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Here, educate yourself.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbirds-scam-detection

Barry Gold
Barry Gold Question owner
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You've answered why it happens. But I can't change the way Facebook generates messages, so I'm asking for an enhancement to TBird that allows me to say, "this message is not a scam, and I want similar messages not marked as possible scam."

What does "similar" mean? Messages where the second level domain (e.g. xxx.com) in both the linked-URL and the displayed URL are the same as in this message.

Also the case where the text of the link is _not_ a URL and does not resemble a URL (e.g., "commented on (user name)'s post in (name of group)" ) and the linked-URL's second-level domain is the same as in this message.

That would let me teach Thunderbird to not mark Facebook's messages as scams.

finitarry
finitarry
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Chosen Solution

Apparently the scam notification does not work too well anyway. You can turn that off in Options > Security > Email Scams.

Barry Gold
Barry Gold Question owner
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I guess I'll call that "solved". However, clicking "solved the problem" got an error, so i can't formally mark it that way.