How can I block emails with no sender?

So it looks like a new email spam technique has developed. The email is send without a sending email address. When one of these emails is received by the Apple Mail app (Big Sur 11.6.5 on my imac), the "From" column displays (no sender). This thread on the Apple Community line How can I block emails from “no sender?” - Apple Community

provides absolutely no help. The Apple Reply appears to be from a AI bot that does not have human supervision. Given that the above link provides no help whatsoever, I thought it a good idea to ask again. Seems hard to believe that the Apple Mail app cannot screen these new spammers. Or perhaps later versions of macOS have solved the problem? My iMac is too old for an upgrade to a more recent macOS.

Posted on Aug 19, 2023 8:05 AM

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Posted on Apr 9, 2024 6:10 AM

The most effective way I have found that seems to work and Does not delete all your emails is on a Mac go to preferences “Rules” create one rule don’t involve any any other rules with it .. “From” “Does Not Contain” “ . “ .. then create a mailbox on your Mac called “ filtered mail “ have this rule send any mail to this box… only use it for this rule.. don’t add it to a pre-existing rule. Then, when you go to your mail, you look in the filtered box, anything that should be kept for whatever reason you can transfer back to the inbox and anything else you just select all and delete.

107 replies

Aug 19, 2023 11:25 AM in response to garygorman

Another reason I don't want to try an OS re-install is because I belieive this problem (cant block "no sender" emails) is a known problem with Apple mail. The thread I referenced is at least a year old. But on that year-old thread there are no useful solutions provided by Apple Support. So I suspect this is a known bug and Apple Support just doesnt want to acknowledge it publicly. I can't think of any other reason why such a simple question would go unanswered for so long. I suppose another reason why the original thread has not been answered is because it's a bot answering with no human supervision.

Aug 20, 2023 11:08 AM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad, I don't understand. Keyboard Maestro looks like a tool to create keyboard shortcuts. I get one "no sender" email every day. If I want to delete that email I make two clicks, one to select the email and the second click on the trash icon. So that's not many clicks to delete. I guess you could get it to one click with a custom keyboard shortcut, like shift-comand-alt-x-select or whatever. Are you suggesting my two click process could be improved to one click or are you suggesting something different?


Sep 12, 2023 4:24 PM in response to garygorman

FYI to all readers on this discussion thread: Someone, presumably an Apple agent, is curating this discussion thread.


I know this because since I started this discussion thread on August 19, 2023 (about three weeks ago) many messages have been deleted from this discussion thread and the non-deleted messages have been rearranged in what appears order of importance. So I conclude Apple is curating this thread.


Apple's curation of this thread appears to me to be a good idea as the key solutions to the problem are easier to locate.


However the curation does have the disadvantage that if you wanted to reply to a specific contributor you may not be able if that contributor's message was deleted. I am brand new to this forum. Perhaps there are message thread display options which are user selectable and I am simply unaware. Or not.


Apple's curation of this thread begs several questions. Maybe readers of this thread will know the answers? Certainly the curator/s could chime in with some useful info.


1) What happened to the "me too" button? When I first visited this thread today I saw a "me too" button with "43" displayed adjacent to the "me too" button. I concluded that 42 people besides me have this problem. But then I signed in and the "me too" button is nowhere to be found.


2) How many "me toos" are needed to raise the priority of this issue sufficiently high for Apple to fix the problem? For this (no sender) problem, seems likely the Mail App could be revised in less than sixty seconds.


Sep 15, 2023 8:47 AM in response to pfsonline

pfsonline's solution did not work for me because it moved ALL of my inbox messages to the trash. it took me 15 minutes to move them all back.


Seems to me that pfsonline's solution should have worked. I entered the intructions correctly in the Apple Mail rules dialog box, i think. "From" "does not contain" "." So I don't know what went wrong. It appears to me that the Apple Mail Rules are not working correctly for me in this instance? macOS Big Sur 11.6.5

Feb 27, 2024 8:43 AM in response to garygorman

I can tell you that under ios17 and MacOS Sonoma, emails from “No Sender” continue to come through. In the last two weeks, I’ve been receiving a minimum of 20 such emails per day.


I can find no way to block these. I can’t add them to Junk because nothing identifying their source is available for blocking. I can only delete them day after day.


Please, Apple! Please add a filter to block “No Sender” and the next one they’ll try - “No Subject” emails. I’m quite fine accidentally missing out on something important that lacks either of these identifiers.

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How can I block emails with no sender?

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