Spam e-mails are not blocked by Bitdefender Antispam

If you receive a lot of spam messages that are not marked as [spam], you must configure the Bitdefender antispam filter to improve its efficiency.

1.  Report undetected spam

If you are using one of the mail clients Bitdefender integrates into, indicate which email messages should have been detected as spam. Doing so helps improve the efficiency of the antispam filter.

ⓘ Note: The Bitdefender Antispam toolbar works only with these e-mail clients as long as they are configured to receive emails via the POP3/SMTP protocol: Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2021 and Mozilla Thunderbird 14 or higher. Bitdefender does not provide antispam protection for email accounts that you access through a web-based email service.

Follow these steps:

1. Open your email client (Outlook or Thunderbird).

2. Go to the Inbox folder.

3. Select the undetected spam messages.

4. Click the Is Spam button on the Bitdefender antispam toolbar. This button is normally located in the upper part of the mail client window. They are immediately marked as [spam] and moved to the Junk mail folder.

2. Block spammers

The email messages received from addresses in the Spammers list are automatically marked as [spam]. If you are using a supported mail client, you can easily add the senders of the spam messages to the Spammers list. Follow these steps:

1. Open your mail client.

2. Go to the Junk mail folder where spam messages are moved.

3. Select the messages marked as [spam] by Bitdefender.

4. Click the Add Spammer button on the Bitdefender antispam toolbar.

5. You may be asked to acknowledge the addresses added to the Spammers list. Select Don’t show this message again and click OK.

Alternatively, you can manually add spammers to the Spammers list directly from the Bitdefender interface. It is convenient to do this only when you have received several spam messages from the same email address. Follow these steps:

1. Click Protection on the navigation menu on the Bitdefender interface.

2. In the ANTISPAM pane, click Settings.

3. Go to the Manage Spammers window.

4. Type the spammer’s email address and then click the Add. You can add as many email addresses as you want.

5. Click OK to save the changes and close the window.

If no spam message is marked as [spam], there may be a problem with the Bitdefender Antispam filter.

Before troubleshooting this problem, make sure it is not caused by one of the following conditions:

• Antispam protection might be turned off. To verify the antispam protection status, click Protection on the navigation menu on the Bitdefender interface. Look in the Antispam pane to check if the feature is enabled. If Antispam is turned off, this is what is causing your problem. Click the corresponding switch to turn on your antispam protection.

• The Bitdefender Antispam protection is available only for Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird configured to receive email messages via the POP3 protocol. This means that email messages received via web-based email services (such as Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, or others) are not checked for spam by Bitdefender.

• If your email client is configured to receive email messages using other protocol than POP3 (for example, IMAP4), the Bitdefender Antispam filter does not check them for spam. POP3 is one of the most widely used protocols for downloading email messages from a mail server. If you do not know the protocol that your email client uses to download email messages, ask the person who configured your email client.

A quick fix is to reinstall Bitdefender to repair the product. For a step-by-step tutorial, refer to – Uninstall & Reinstall Bitdefender on your PC: Easy product repair.