I have done a search here and not found a specific solution. I use my .me account for non-work related messages. It has been just fine for this purpose. Recently, I am getting frequent SPAM. I ‘unsubscribe’ etc but I also notice that it’s using a gmail address for my address—-I do not see evidence of an alias (the actual .me address). I would like not to buy Spam Sieve as I’m trying to cut down on the app habit.
Unfortunately you’ve probably made your own problem here.
If the original spam emails were from non legitimate sources, by clicking on unsubscribe, you’ve inadvertently notified the spammer that your address is legitimate. This allows them to send you more spam and sell your address.
On spam filter:
Anti Spam filters usually work by scanning your emails before they get to your email server. This is how Apple’s works. The problem you have with a .me email address is that there’s no way for you to set something like this up.
If you want an anti spam filter (and with .me I think you can only do this through a macOS mail app plug in) then you’ll want to get a respected service which usually means paying. Otherwise you’re allowing a 3rd party whose purpose for processing your data may not be good to scan all of your email which may mean they’ll use your data for their own purposes, e.g. profiling or selling your data.
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THIS!!!
Move the email to Junk (if you are using Apple Mail) so it will “learn” what you consider unwanted content. As I told customers at the Genius Bar for years, ONLY click unsubscribe IF you actually subscribed in the first place. Please share this advice with family members of ALL ages today.
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I don’t use my Apple-provided email address for my primary personal email, but I do monitor it. In the last few weeks, the amount of spam has increased a LOT. It’s all going to the junk mail folder, but I admit it was startling to see 20+ messages in there, compared with the usual 1 or 2.
@violagail, I’m not sure what exactly you’re asking for. You don’t need SpamSieve if Mail’s junk filtering is working well enough for you. If those spam messages are going to your inbox, try dragging them to the Junk folder to train your account that they are spam. If you do this consistently for a while, Mail should get the idea and start moving those to Junk automatically. I’ve had pretty good luck with the spam recognition.
As for the Gmail address, where is it appearing? In the “to” or “from” of the spam messages? Is the Gmail address an account that you use?
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All good advice. Thanks so much for responding.
Unlike Apple’s @me.com, .me is a regular TLD, so you can use a respectable (paid) service, like Fastmail (and others), to host your email and filter spam.
It’s in the ‘to’ and is not a gmail account I have.
I’d also recommend not using the Block function in Apple Mail. I thought it would be a shortcut to move blocked mail straight to the trash, but I noticed later that Apple sends a ‘You’ve been blocked” email to the sender. So, appears that it does the same thing as hitting unsubscribe. My scam/spam emails to my .Mac.com account have increased from 2-4 a day to 150+ in the last two weeks.
That sounds like there’s been a massive change in the way spammers work, or that Apple’s filter is current underperforming significantly.
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That’s definitely weird. I can come up with one scenario where this might happen, but it seems highly unlikely. I don’t know enough about email to know if this kind of thing is possible by screwing with email headers. Or possibly something at Gmail has gone wrong, and they’re forwarding things they shouldn’t be.
Something’s happened very recently. I’m getting the same spam (100+/day)at two Apple accounts. Neither appear in recent breaches listed in haveibeenpwnd