Has anyone noticed an absurd amount of SPAM on icloud emails? Apple used to have the best filters. I now get upwards of 100 emails every hour in my junk folder. I used to go months before getting even 10 junk emails. What happened to Apple's spam settings?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
If your account is pretty old your .mac and .me addresses are totally locked to your iCloud address as permanent aliases and can NEVER be removed. So you'll never be able to fix it from that standpoint. Try getting a spam filter like SpamSieve. Apple should be automatically doing something like that in my opinion. One solution, that could be very problematic, would be to get a different iCloud account. BUT, then you may lose some programs and will definitely lose Apple music or iTunes. Apple has no way you can move things to a new Apple iCould account without issues. Or do a new account but discontinue email totally on the old account and restart email with the new account. Then, you would still have access to things like iTunes but would have to sign in to your old account to use it. Due to the ever changing nature of spam nothing Apple offers truly works for long. Especially with spam from lists and groups. It just keeps coming with simple changes of a letter, or number somewhere in the from or to fields. What I was told was to send all spam to abuse@apple.com. Either directly or as an attachment. This takes time but if it overloads Apple maybe they'll finally start to take it seriously. Of course they don't read any of it but perhaps an uptick in numbers will be noticed. This is shameful on Apple's part. I have had many conversations with Apple about this and they either have no idea or what they offer won't really work. There is no reason I can think of for them not to allow the deletion of mac.com and me.com or to be able to switch to a different iCloud account without all the hassles and losses of programs, data, whatever. They can't even tell me what would really be affected.
zazzang wrote:
Here for this reason alone. It's becoming unbearable how much spam I get lately! I started exclusively using icloud email years ago because it only had emails I wanted. sigh.
Over time, the more you use an email address, the more spam it will get. This is true of email from any provider. I hardly ever use my iCloud email address so I get zero spam. My Gmail account, my primary address, is a different story. It gets lots. Fortunately, Gmail's spam filtering is quite good. I recognize there are many good reasons for not using Gmail.
One of the things you can do is have one email address you use for sending email to known individuals (friends, family, trusted associates) and another that you use for any kind of online business such as purchasing things from websites, subscribing to newsletters, donating to political campaigns, entering contests. In other words, anything where you don't have a personal relationship with the recipient. The personal address should remain relatively free of spam for longer.
Yes, me too. It's like it happened overnight. At first it was coming in on a @.iCloud address I never use, but today I noticed it's all shifted over to a @me.com address I only use for work-related emails. I was about to try and narrow down any services I've used with that email address to Opt-Out of 3rd Party communications (which is only about 3-4), but I think that will be useless. At least it's comforting to know it's not just me.
Up until now, I've just let it collect in my Junk mail folder on my computer and then right-click on that folder to delete them all at once without clicking on any of the messages. But it's a pain because I have to scan through to make certain no client emails are amongst them. I also thought by not clicking on the email and letting them know there's an active address on the other side, it would decrease...but no. Frustrating and hope Apple does something.
Co-signed. My iCloud email account is so old that it's actually a .Mac account. I have never had a spam problem until recently — I could check my junk mail folder once a week to easily spot if any legitimate messages ended up in there — but now it suddenly numbers in the hundreds per day. And while most of them end in the spam folder (maybe thanks to Postbox, the email client I use, more than Apple), increasingly I'm seeing messages that slip past that too. The whole reason I stuck with this address was because this was never a problem. Now it's worse than any other email address I have in use! Come on, Apple.
Update 4/17/2023: My situation has not improved. I have tried changing all of the settings in the Mail app and on iCloud on the web, I have signed out signed in, restarted, reset the SMC, reset the junk filter itself, examined long headers in emails, fired up Terminal, and I am up to 160 junk mails today, and it's barely 9:30 this morning. This used to work really, really well. I hate to editorialize in a support comment, but: modern Apple hardware is impressive indeed - the software side is the worst I have seen it in some time, truly a very long, epic time, not just in terms of functionality, but design as well. I have never encountered this level of trouble with iCloud, or with Mac OS in general, over 30 years, I am very much a power user, and I am at a loss.
This is something on *your*side, Apple, and you need to fix it. These are the sorts of things Microsoft's customers just accepted back in the day. Apple is supposed to be the alternative to that.
Please fix it, Apple. My website gets less spam, and it does not utilize your tools. This used to be the most secure email account I had. Something is clearly not right. I have now encountered people not just in these forums, but that I actually know in real life, who are encountering the same issues, and the OS version seems to be a triviality.
cygnetswan wrote:
So I received a message from Apple: "We’ve edited your post SPAM overload on ICloud Email Address because it contained inappropriate language or comments."
What that tells me is:
1) They do know about the situation/are monitoring posts.
2) Have no plans to address the issue. (Many complaints on twitter too, with no official commitment to address.)
Those are incorrect assumptions. Apple Hosts monitor these threads for adherence to the terms of use. They do not read them for feedback or pass on any such feedback to the responsible parties. Their are simply too few hosts, too many posts and too little time.
Use the feedback page to let Apple know your thoughts:
Bob Owen has a thread in this section of Community Support titled "iCloud email Junk filter does not work!" and I have contributed to that thread. I am having the same problem, and Apple's "solution" was to create "rules" for all of the e-mails I'm receiving. I am currently up to 53 rules, and I'm continuing to add them based on all of the spam I'm receiving.
I have a me.com address, which I've used since 2008 when Apple had "MobileMe." I have NEVER had this problem until about the end of January/beginning of February, (so 15 years of junk free e-mail messaging). Even when I mark something as "Junk," it continues to go directly to my inbox - BUT I do have to mention that all of the rules I've made have been working. HOWEVER, I don't think I should have ever had to do that. Plus, I'm getting lots of weird messages, some with odd characters/foreign languages. Unfortunately, there isn't a rule I can make to block messages with content that isn't in my preferred language.
I've called many times (I think 6 now?) and each time I have talked to different specialists. This is all very frustrating. I have already "left feedback" for iCloud twice now. I don't have anything else to contribute other than to tell you all that I feel your pain, and if anyone has a different or better solution, please please let me know.
I feel your pain! I am just getting ready to turn off iCloud mail as I was told that was the only way to stop email spam coming to me.com. Old address. As soon as I finish changing all email to a gmail address I will do that. I can make all the rules I want and use a spam filter but it just keeps coming. Can't really tell who it's addressed to as it comes as "undefined, undefined" or the likes of "intelfireboxmarket". Unfortunately since my Apple ID is very old it cannot be changed to eliminate me.com or Mac.com. Appears these are listed as aliases and there is no way to change them or delete them....yet. Newer accounts apparently are not like this. Apple has sure let us down.
I'm getting a firehose of emails that say "thank you for registering on XXX website" or "Thank you ___(random person's name)__ for activating your account." What's really scary is that most of the "from" addresses appear to be legit businesses. Many are in other languages; German, Polish, Arabic, Chinese, you name it. This started December 15, 2023... five days ago. I get hundreds over a span of 2-3 hours and then they almost stop completely for maybe a day. Then at a random time the following day, another glut of them floods my inbox. I'm moving every one by hand into junk because I check for legit emails buried in with the spam. RIght now my junk folder has 2,000 emails that I've received in the past 5 days.
This is happening to my icloud email address, which I've never had problems with until now. (I also have .mac and .me.) Even if I switch to another email provider like gmail, the bot generating this process of signing me for up for these random sites and services will still be working behind the scenes. This is terrible. I've really lost faith in Apple.
I sent an email to abuse@icloud.com and got this reply:
"Hello,
Thank you for reporting.
We have investigated & taken appropriate action. Please do not respond to such emails and also report/move them to spam/junk folder.
Please let us know, if the issue still persists.
Best regards,
iCloud Mail Team"
Clearly whatever they did didn't work. I've sent another email to them. I will follow up here if I get anything useful from them.
I'd like to chime in with my experience. Like most of you, I've seen a deluge of spam on my icloud account. Fortunately, on my Mac, most of it ends up in the junk folder. However, I've been blocking senders for months and these email messages continue to go into the junk folder, even though all my settings are correct and they are supposed to go directly into the trash. They are definitely emails from blocked senders — they have the 🚫 icon next to the name.
As few things I've noticed ...
I've spoken with a senior advisor at Apple, who was helping me troubleshoot the issue. She confirmed everything was set up properly and that this behavior was unexpected. However, I wasn't able to reconnect with her at our assigned follow-up time, and the next senior advisor basically said there was no way to fix this and I should just create rules for the blocked senders.
Has anyone else noticed the same things I have — emails from blocked senders being properly handled on the iPhone, and being able to use "Apply Rules"? Curious to get your thoughts.
Spam on my icloud account has gotten to the point that I only read them from my Microsoft outlook app on my PC. Using this mail app allows me to block domains, which is something Apple should employ. Getting advice to "block" each email separately is absurd! One particular spam domaine has 12 numbers attached to the address. The permutation of combinations is infinite.
I am seeing around 25 spam emails per day in my iCloud account currently. As others have noticed, "blocking" the senders is strangely useless. Even if you select "enable blocked mail filtering" and the option "move it to the trash" in Apple Mail, the vast majority of blocked emails remain stubbornly in the Junk folder. Creating a rule with a long list of spammer addresses to duplicate this function is also strangely useless, as the rule only works manually. So Apple needs to do two things, at least. First, they need to block more of this spam at the server level. Second, the settings in Mail should be fixed so they do what they say they do, or be removed.
Apple must be very well aware of this problem. After all they have tens of thousands of employees "eating their own dogfood" every day. This tells me the issue is a deep one and not easily solved, for some reason. The only theory I have is the spam assault is a bigger issue with iCloud users whose accounts go back to .me or .Mac.
So at least Apple could stop tying our hands behind our backs and let us defend ourselves. For instance by letting us delete the old .mac & .me aliases these latest spam senders are focussing on
I use Mozilla Thunderbird and have no issues with it. So far no spam has gotten through from gmail addresses. Don't know about Apple addresses. Give it a try.
Spamsieve.........
I’ve had all the settings in place for as long as I can remember. I’ve contacted Apple with the exact same response. It only continues to get worse. It seems that Apple has stopped using strong spam settings because this email address was virtually SPAM free until about a couple months ago.
Spam overload on iCloud Email Address
