I'm getting mail addressed to ...@suddenlinkmail.com I'd never heard of them before & its not me!

Agree. As I wrote earlier, this is a total mystery to me. I started a chat with Apple support a short while ago, but got disconnected. Will try again and then update this thread. But, to me, this looks like a security hole in the Apple Mail Server.

OK. I got on the phone with Apple Support. Got a Senior Advisor who had me send multiple screen shots of some of those messages addressed to ...@suddenlinkmail.com, along with the rules I set up in the mail app (that don't work). He did relate that there was a new "anti-piracy" feature in macOS Ventura that is supposed to be "better" at handling this. ???? But, the issue has been elevated to the engineering team, and I expect to get a response in a day or two.

[Edited by Moderator]

I get about 30 of these emails every day. A week or so ago I got an alert from my credit service that my email was on the dark web. The filter on my Mac mail didn't work but I will try the iCloud suggestion.

I am getting over 100 emails daily from ...@suddenlinkmail.com and have tired all the thoughts provided in these post to stop IT.

I have rules at the iCloud level to move the mail to JUNK, and mark it as read.

Then on my MAC, I have a rule to DELETE the email in junk; however, to force the rule to be applied, I needed to add a line in the rule to set the color of the background to ... (pick a color), then when I need to run the rule, I edit the rule and change the color to the next one on the list, which forces the rule to be applied.

I have worked on eliminating junk email for months now by setting up mail rules. Sometimes it works and other times doesn't. I have worked on this with Apple senior advisors and they too see the same issue in their personal mail accounts. It is a moving target so it is pretty much impossible to fix. Fortunately Apple Mail recognizes most junk mail correctly and keeps it out of my inbox. The senior advisors have suggested reporting this to apple.com/support. Hopefully there will be some help coming in future software revisions.

I have spent weeks working on this with Apple Support, sending them screenshots of the emails, of the rules set up, of the lists of blocked contacts etc. They finally concluded that because these emails are going straight to junk there's nothing they can do to help - blocking contacts only works if the email is being received in the inbox, not the junk mail. They didn't seem to know why the many rules set up worked sometimes and not others, but that could be because I've only set them up in the Mail app and not via iCloud. I'll be interested to hear what Apple Support have to say to you.

I have been very lucky because Apple mail is doing a good job recognizing what is junk and placing it in my junk mail folder keeping it out of my inbox. In setting up rules for junk mail I have always chosen to delete it vs sending it to trash. I don't want to deal with this garbage twice. However one time a rule I setup was in error and began to delete good email. I happen to discover this and with the help of a SA was able to correct it.

Suddenlinkmail seems to fairly new and is proving to be quite difficult. As a test I tried setting a rule: Message is not addressed to my full name..... Move Message to mailbox: Trash. It didn't stop the suddenlink junk but instead began moving my unread good email to trash. I had to delete that rule right away. So rules don't always work correctly. Also just because we see To:*********@suddenlinkmail.com may not necessarily mean it isn't addressed to you. Your email may be there just not shown.

Finally I have found some senior advisors are willing to try to resolve this and others will say "we are not allowed to help you create rules. You need to send feedback to apple.com/support.

I am hoping the SA you are working with will come up with something. In the meantime all I can continue to do is manually delete the junk by control clicking on the junk mailbox and choose delete junk mail. I get up to 100 a day and I check daily to look for anything that doesn't belong there. I have my junk mailbox behavior set up to erase junk mail after 1 week.

Ok, I’m following your directions, and I don’t have Preferences or a place to create a Rule. What am I doing wrong?

as long as I’m here, I have a .me email address. Is it hard to switch to my .iCloud to stop getting spam? I am getting over 100 a day now.

In Safari, go to iCloud.com and log in.

Then, Click on Mail to open the Mail web interface.

In the upper left hand corner (above the list of Mail Boxes), Click on the small GEAR icon.

Select Preferences. Then select Rules.

Click on the Blue Text that says, "Add Rule"

Ok, so signing into iCloud on your phone does not give you the ability to create rules, but I could do it on my iPad.

If I understand correctly it sounds like some people are getting these emails in their inbox. I am getting them in my Junk folder, but I am unable to delete them by swiping left on the email and blocking them in the drop-down

Once you have build your rules as you did, instead of your color change trick you can force your rules to be applied using "Apply Rules" of the "Message" menu header. The rules only apply to the messages selected, but you can select all the emails in your Junk box (iMac MacOS Big Sur 11.7.7)

For any of those spam messages that appear to be addressed to some nonsense email address (suddenlinkmail.com, etc.), take a look at the full header of the message.

Select the message. From View drop down menu, select Message, then all headers.

If your real email address appears anywhere among all the gobbledygook, I think this means that the originator does have your real email address. (Can anyone who understands these headers confirm this?)

If that is the case, then these messages showing up as addressed to suddenlinkmail.com etc is sort of a blessing, because it gives us a way to identify these messages and use a rule (in iCloud.com Mail) to move them to Trash before they come to our In Box. (Note, if you move them to Junk, you will just have to deal with them again.)

I can confirm that my real address appears in the headers of those emails (menu item "View" then "Show > All Headers", for those who don't know this yet), and that i already have a rule to delete those emails, but as Mail on my iMac move them to my Junk mailbox, that rule cannot apply without manually invoking "Apply Rules" in menu "Message", by which you can delete All those "...@suddenlinkmail.com" at once.

I have now added a rule in iCloud.com Mail to move them to the Trash there, hoping that my iMac Mail will kindly delete them using my Rules on the iMac then (fingers crossed)…

Keep you informed then…

I’m afraid that what you confirmed is the bad news. For those of us who are getting bombarded with those “To: Suddenlink mail.com messages, it appears the spammers have our real email addresses.

The good news is that Rules created (on the iCloud server, using a web interface [Safari], can keep them out of our In Boxes.

My understanding is that Rules on the Mac are only applied to Mail coming into the In Box. With the “move to Trash” rule in the Server, they should not go to your In Box. Therefore, you can delete the Junk rule on your Mac.

I have scheduled Mail to empty my Trash daily.

Also evaluating an approach where I created (on the Server) a new Folder called Suddenlink Cr*p, and a Rule to move those messages to this folder instead of Trash.

This keeps the Trash manageable. But now I need to empty the Suddenlink Cr*p folder once in a while. Being able to use Automations to manage Mail folders would be a blessing. But, I don’t think Apple allows that currently.