Rogue email mailboxes being auto generated and populated with spam

I've searched thoroughly for this and can't seem to find anyone having this issue. On my devices using Apple Mail, I am having spam email not even addressed to me appearing in auto created foldes using 3 digit numbers as the folder names. I can't delete them all and a few days later can have up to a dozen or so again. This is on an @domain email account and the email is not passing through the server. I have the email account set up on 4 devices as IMAP, so they are all synced, and can also access the mail via a webmail app. In the webmail app and one computer I am using Thunderbird, these mailboxes are not showing up. They are only populating on the 3 devices where I am using Apple Mail.


They seem to be separating based on source. For example, one folder may have emails from "Miss Lola" and another "Loog Guitars" and then another all Chinese writing. The "To" email address is not valid and will look something like keith+123@mydomain.com ("mydomain") will be my actual domain) then it puts it in a created folder "123"


I have no idea where they are coming or how to stop it. It is concerning because it seems like Malware activity. But nothing shows and a scan.


Has anyone run into this? How can I stop it?

Posted on Jul 6, 2026 8:58 AM

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2 replies

Oct 9, 2026 11:15 AM in response to Astonished Man

Is your domain mail managed by Google, by chance?


If so, this sounds like a feature of Google that parses + in email addresses.


For any user@yourdomain, Google automatically supports user+<anything>@yourdomain, and it filters the emails to your main account. It's designed to let you create unlimited sub-categories for your account, like user+personal@yourdomain for personal emails, user+somesite@yourdomain for registration at somesite (so you can easily tell if that site is leaking your email address).


In this case it sounds like spammers are just sending opportunistic emails to Keith+123@yourdomain and gmail is processing it like it normally would.


There's no way to stop anyone from sending you mail, and I don't think you can turn off the +<anything> feature itself - the best you can do is setup a filter to trash these emails when they come in.

Rogue email mailboxes being auto generated and populated with spam

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