Apple Mail: Block 'Friends ____' scam emails

Create a Mail Rule to have those automatically moved to Junk that is not based on a single rule for the sender or your Friends name. You can create multiple rules to isolate those messages such one that contains the name where the sender is NOT in your Contacts. That way your friend's emails would not be blocked. There may be common language in the description of the emails that you can also include in that rule.

• Change Rules settings in Mail on Mac - Apple Support (CA)
• Change Rule settings in Mail on Mac - Apple Support (CA)

As for tracking down the person to prosecute them, that is very unlikely. No positive identification is required to create an email address, all you would be able to do is track it back to the email server where it originated and cooperation by them is voluntary unless served with a subpoena. Even then it does not track back to a particular person, only the IP Address. Even IP Addresses can be "spoofed", so they are not completely reliable.

westred wrote:

I would like to find and prosecute the sender of these email messages

I'd like a week's vacation on a Mediterranean island. I'm more likely to get my wish.

The email addresses are fake, and they change regularly. Trying to find and prosecute the offenders is a jurisdictional nightmare as the perpetrators are most likely not in the same country as you and may be in multiple different countries using servers in other countries who don't have any agreements with whatever country you live in to allow subpoenas. And it's most likely not one spammer but many.

but barring that I would like to at least have Apple Mail block them. I guess my only option would be to block based on the display name of the email. Even then, without reviewing all of them (and I have deleted all of them after reporting), it is possible that the display name varies slightly. Plus since it includes a common name, using that name as a wildcard would block my real friend's email too.

Does anyone else have this problem?

I use Gmail (which has its own issues), and it does an excellent job filtering out things like this. You may want to consider using something like SpamSieve, which is highly regarded and uses Bayesian filters, which will generally take care of things like this. It isn't free, though.

Have you reported it and gotten action on it?

Even if action were taken, you would never know about it.

It is possible that if enough of us have a "Friends..." scammer sending us links that a group of people could provide enough information to stop the person.

No.

westred wrote:

For 6-9 months, I receive emails that are scams and spam. I have reported them twice to the FTC and the IC3. These email messages always have the same sender display name which is "Friends ____" where ___ is a person's name. I happen to know someone with that name but it is fairly common so I don't know whether the scammer made that connection or they just randomly chose the name.

The characteristics of the email is the Display Name of the sender. A drop down of the actual send shows it is different each time. All the true email addresses I have seen have a country code out of Europe. Each has one or two sentences "Fw: Re: Photographs Friends ____" or "Arragements Party/ Gathering 2026 June Friends _____". The body of the email always has a link preceded by a sentence like "1 photo that should be quite familiar to you " or maybe something like "here are photos from our party". I have never clicked on the links. I have never tried to reply. I get these email messages 2 or 3 times per week.

My question is out here in case other people have this issue. I would like to find and prosecute the sender of these email messages ; but barring that I would like to at least have Apple Mail block them. I guess my only option would be to block based on the display name of the email. Even then, without reviewing all of them (and I have deleted all of them after reporting), it is possible that the display name varies slightly. Plus since it includes a common name, using that name as a wildcard would block my real friend's email too.

Does anyone else have this problem?

Have you reported it and gotten action on it?

It is possible that if enough of us have a "Friends..." scammer sending us links that a group of people could provide enough information to stop the person.

Is there a way in Apple Mail to stop these from coming to my inbox - maybe I can send them to a smart mailbox folder?

Any other considerations on how to catch this scammer?

I’ll interpret that as indicating some unfamiliarity around the legal and technical details of spam, and that you — like most of us — have a spam problem.

I’ll also assume you don’t want to know the technical details of spam, and the limits of spam reporting.

You can mark those as mail messages spam, and use the Apple built-in spam filtering, or can install and use a third-party app such as SpamSieve. I’ve been using SpamSieve for a number of years, and it works well. Better than the built-in spam filtering.

If the spammer is (unusually) using the same string “Friend Your Example Person”, then a mail rule will work, as was memtioned. The word “pervert” was used quite persistently by spammers in recent times, and that word was very effective for spam filtering.