How to block an email address?

Set up a mail rule with whatever you want to (not) happen, if the mail addresses or message contents are consistent.

Spammers routinely fake from and to addresses and vary contents, so fixed rules don’t necessarily work very well.

If the messages are not consistent (as is common), mark them as spam using either Mac mail, or an add-on app such as SpamSieve.

franksmarcoux wrote:

Thank you for the honest answer. I have gotten bogus emails from Fidelity to a .aol email address I don't have also. I guess I will just keep unsubscribing.

Unsubscribing verifies to the spammer that the recipient email address is valid and works, that the user read the (spam) email message, and that the user is willing to engage with a spammer, which in aggregate makes the associated email address more valuable for use, and more valuable for sale to other spammers.

Put slightly differently, unsubscribing from spam only gets more spam.

Somewhat-related reading: Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support

This suggestion does not work. For the past few years I have been receiving similar mail, often but not always with a false AOL address. One sender in particular FidelityLife has been persistent. I have tried writing rules and nothing happens. I have tried blocking them on my iPad, iPhone and Mac, and the next they day they are back, marked as being on my blocked list, but there nevertheless less.

Why doesn't blocking work? Why do the mails still show up in my mailbox even when I have asked that they be sent to the trash? This function does not seem to work at all.

TRWheaton wrote:

…receiving similar mail, often but not always with a false AOL address. One sender in particular FidelityLife has been persistent. I have tried writing rules and nothing happens. I have tried blocking them on my iPad, iPhone and Mac, and the next they day they are back, marked as being on my blocked list, but there nevertheless less.

Why doesn't blocking work? Why do the mails still show up in my mailbox even when I have asked that they be sent to the trash? This function does not seem to work at all.

Spammers deliberately vary the sending information and the sending mail servers and the message contents to prevent rules from working, as was mentioned in my previous reply.

No junk mail sender wants all their mail to be easily blocked by a simple rule, as that’d be the end of the junk mail industry.

Junk mail filters such as those present in Mail (functional but comparatively weak, in my experience) or in SpamSieve (better) use a variety of different attributes within the arriving mail message to detect and filter spam.

The technical term for this filtering is Bayesian filtering; a form of filtering based on the statistics derived from real and spam messages based on what is and is not present in the individual messages either arriving at the server, or arriving at your mailbox.

If you want to know why and how two spam messages differ, look at the raw message sources for the two messages. Look for the differences. Viewing raw mail message source is possible on a Mac, but is not a feature supported by iPhone or iPad mail.

franksmarcoux wrote:

Thank you for the honest answer. I have gotten bogus emails from Fidelity to a .aol email address I don't have also. I guess I will just keep unsubscribing.

No don't "unsubscribe". Unsubscribing tells the phishing senders that they found a good email address with someone there. You guarantee that you will get more scam/phishing email if you send "unsubscribe" to the scammers/phishers.

Your address is likely in the BCC field or you would not receive the email. Blocking the "To" aol address will not stop the emails from getting to you.

Thank you for the honest answer. I have gotten bogus emails from Fidelity to a .aol email address I don't have also. I guess I will just keep unsubscribing.