Today I responded to an email from a friend and noticed that the sent message was marked (more or less) "This message is from a blocked sender." After a bit of poking I found that the blocked sender was me and that all of my email addresses going back several previous employers as well as my phone numbers were all on the block list in Mail. I'm at a loss for how this could have happened, I assume it was recently, but there are no time stamps on the entries in the blocked list. The only clue I have is that I got a spam message from Amazon this morning & when I tried to add the Amazon address to the block list it was already on the list (but despite having enabled blocked mail filtering and set it to move blocked mail to trash the message was in my inbox. Maybe as I poked around to try and make sense of that I might have blocked myself by accident, but my old email addresses aren't on my Contacts card any more. I'm most puzzled & would love to hear an explanation or even some theories.

I'm using Apple Mail 16.0 (3696.120.41.1.1) on a MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017) with macOS Monterey 12.6.2 (21G320). I don't know when it started but there's a problem I have since some months: Sometimes when I click on an e-mail in the list of e-mails, no matter in which folder (inbox, sent …), the header (from, to, subject, date) gets shown as usual but the e-mail content is empty, just white space. This happens with all my e-mail accounts. All of them are IMAP accounts. All these e-mails are already downloaded and often only a few KB in size. It's the same with e-mails with and without attachments. There's no "This message has no content" message or similar. This also happens when I disable the internet connection. When that happens the content preview in the e-mails list is visible as usual as well as the e-mail header. Only the mail content is blank. Sometimes I just have to wait a few seconds to see the content. Sometimes I can make the content visible by clicking on another e-mail and then back to that e-mail. But often I have to restart Apple Mail. This not only happens to one e-mail but often to multiple e-mails simultaneously. I click from e-mail to e-mail and they all show that behavior. **Rebuild** didn't help. Also reinstalling macOS (keep data but reinstall macOS) didn't help. I even completely erased the system, made a fresh install of macOS, and then restored data from a backup. (I'm pretty sure my problem would be solved if I'd make a fresh install and then import data and make the settings manually instead of restoring from a backup but I cannot do that currently.) Do you have any idea how to solve that problem? Is there any error log I can check?

Hackers have daily targeted my **Mac Messages** app. I get a dozen or so messages daily from similar but slightly differing handles. For example: All of the handles using an email address has consistently utilized "pqe@icloud.com" at the end of the address. Yet, last week, these hackers are now using phone numbers too. So I can't programatically search for messages by handle now that email *and* phone number is used. **However**, *the message body copy is the same*: > "Hello there" Can I use actionscript to specifically target any message with "Hello there" string, then delete it without all the modal windows asking if I am sure, or if I want to report spam? And also a schedule the script to run every minute or so? Thank you so much! Bruce

Recently, I get much more "Potential Spam" calls than before. It is good that the phone rings with the text "Potential Spam" shown on the screen. However, I have to block the phone numbers one by one. Right now I have blocked 30 of them and the list is just "non stop". Well, is there a way to tell iPhone: if you are showing the "Potential Spam" message, then simply don't ring, or outright, automatically block the caller. Is there a way to do it?

I've read many posts on this, here and on other forums — everyone says "just mark it as spam and block them". But that's never an answer to 'how are the spam messages able to get into my Known Senders group?'. Apple Support also routinely does not answer this question, e.g. , and my live support call from Apple had me go through the steps below + restart. I've routinely (monthly) restarted the phone, and this problem has been happening multiple times each week, for years. (i)Messages fully routes classical SMS at this point. If my settings are to *'only receive messages from those in my address book'* then how do any of these messages come through to the Known Senders list? 1. I have "filters unknown senders" turned on in my iOS settings. 1. The phone numbers or emails are clearly not from anyone that are in my known senders. 1. I've never received a message from them. 1. They've never been on a CC list with me. I'm fine if telecom protocols implicitly require that the message come to me — and that Apple auto-files it into a separate area (Unknown Senders) that I don't need to pay attention to. (I'm not actually but that's a longer rant +idea) But why does the spam keep coming into my main Known Senders feed of Messages?

I'm on an extended trip to Southeast Asia, and I'm using a local carrier with my iPhone. My carrier is sending me spam via text messages several times daily (occasionally also via Government Alerts). The Messages app's option to block a caller doesn't work for the various senders involved. Although the option is available, it's reset immediately after I leave the contact card within Messages. The option to hide alerts works just fine, so it looks like Messages is able to identify the senders, i.e., the carrier isn't just using a unique number or name for each text message. None of the senders have phone numbers associated with them, so I can't just add the numbers to a blocked contact within the Contacts app. Does anyone have a solution or any insight into why Messages doesn't block the senders? Here's a [screen recording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTs4jPYLIrI) and a screenshot of the "Block Caller" option:

First, I feel kind of dumb -- I know *never* to click on questionable links. But a friend* sent me an email message to my iPhone 11 (iOS 17.4.1) with a link to a website with a picture of them. They're reasonably well known, so I thought, well, it could be, so I clicked. Safari brought up a screen saying the site was questionable. For some reason (fatigue?) I clicked on the link that said "show IP address" (I think that is what it said). I clicked on that and Safari showed a blank grey screen and said (as best I remember it) "can't open the site". I don't know, of course, with 100% certainty that this was Safari saying this, or whether it was the spoof site. Safari also offered me (at the top of the screen) the chance to "reduce protection" (I have whatever enhanced protection the latest iOS offers enabled). This is a legitimate thing Safari does sometimes when a site won't load. I don't *believe* I clicked "reduce protection". At that point the blindingly obvious made it's way through to me: that this site was bad. I quickly closed the tab. (The speed with which I did all of this, including backing out of the whole thing, is the reason I'm so vague when I describe my actions above: the whole thing lasted 10 seconds). Clearly this was an attempt to do something questionable to me. I know that on my computer I can run an anti-virus check program. But I have no idea how much risk I am at on my iPhone. And how to check to make sure nothing made its way down to me. Given my memory of what happened, it seems unlikely that anything happened, since it *seems* I never made a full connection to the site. But I can't be sure. Since my entire world is on my phone, I'd like to be sure that all is well. What, if anything, can I do, to make sure all is well. Is there any anti-virus software I should run, or does iOS provide its own protection? I have Apple Pay on the phone. Is there any way to "hack" into that? (Forgive my ignorance -- I am a programmer, so not un-tech-savvy, but cybersecurity and payment schemes are beyond my paygrade). *Narrator: "It wasn't his friend" :-)

I noticed that sending certain links through email do not get received by the recipient. I tried to narrow down the issue, and it seems to be on the Apple side. This does not happen with every link I try to send, but I have provided one particular link below that this happens with as an example. **Description:** I create an email and place the following link in the body of the email: https://groundedtechs.com The email shows as "sent", shows up in my sent folder, and no error messages are created. However, the recipient never receives the email, in neither Inbox or Junk/Spam folders. This issue only happens when sending some links through email, not every link. The issue persists if sending through iCloud Mail, iPhone Mail app, and Mac OS Mail app. I tried the following combinations of sender/receiver account addresses, with the following results: | Sender | Receiver | Result | |:---: |:------:| :----:| | Apple Email | Apple Email | **Fail to receive** | |Apple Email | Google Email | **Fail to receive**| |Google Email| Apple Email | Successfully received| |Google Email | Google Email | Successfully received| I'm not sure why this is. Is Apple scanning sent emails for possible spam? If so, how come I never get any notification that my email was not sent through, or was rejected? Thanks!

Over the last couple of weeks, I have received several spam emails from Apple trying to get me to sign up for Apple Arcade or Apple Fitness+. It's very disheartening but not at all surprising that a company that used to pride itself on its premium user experience is resorting to such crass marketing tactics. Is there any way to get them to cut this crap out? I can't just block all emails from an apple.com address since I also occasionally get important correspondences from them. These emails have no link to unsubscribe. As near as I can tell, they are genuine emails from Apple and show no signs of being spam. (Correct sender, headers, images from Apple's servers, links go to apple.com, etc.) I have already unchecked all of the available checkboxes in the privacy section of appleid.apple.com regarding email I receive from them: Is there anything else I can do?

Sometimes there's a spam e-mail in my inbox. I just have to click the spam button and the e-mail will get moved to the Junk folder. Some emails even land in the Junk folder automatically. I assume over time Apple Mail learns and gets better in recognizing spam and will be better in automatically filtering it. That is right, isn't it? Will marking an e-mail as spam also help other users spam filter? Does Apple has something like a spam filter that learns more the more users mark their e-mails as spam? Or does marking an e-mail as spam only influence the spam filter on my Mac?

Someone has been sending me spam by spoofing my email address as the sender in order to get through the spam filter. I've searched through the detailed headers and found a URL that all the spam seems to be coming from (atlas206.aol.mail.ne1.yahoo.com). I'd like to add that to the spam filter, but I can't, because Apple Mail doesn't look at the detailed headers for filtering, only whatever the official "sender" is. Is there any way to filter for a specific phrase in the full headers?

I have an iPhone SE 2 (iOS 15.5). I keep getting obviously spam texts from the same sender; they look like this: As can be seen, the sender is clearly obvious - FreeStuff. They appear to be conventional texts (SMS), not iMessages. Touching on the sender name, I then touch on the 'info' icon, and touch 'Block this Caller', and select 'Block Contact'. That seems to work. However, if I navigate out of this menu, and repeat the process, it appears not to be blocked. Indeed, I am still recieving the spam texts, despite the attempt at blocking. I've also reported them to my network provider (7726 in the UK), but of course, I assume that's only as effective as their network-side blocking. I would like to do the blocking on my phone.

I would like to make sure that junk websites (like SparkNotes when I search for Shakespeare info, or Pinterest when I search for images) don't appear in my search results in Google or any search engine. Some search engines support this, and Google used to but no longer does. But in any case what I'm looking for is something that does this for both macOS and iOS, and works in Safari (especially for Google). Is there a way to do this?

I have started noticing that email comes into Mail that gets nearly immediately deleted. I notice it either by the system level notification, or looking at the mailbox I see that it comes in. Then in less than one second, the mail disappears. That is, the mail is not anywhere in any mailbox. In particular, it is not in my Today smart mailbox, which should show everything, even spam. So IT IS NOT IN MY SPAM FOLDER. I have re-checked all of my rules, and none of them permanently delete mail, although there are a few that move mail to Trash. I am wondering if this could be caused by the IMAP server in any way. For example, there would have to be some automated action that causes the server to deliver the mail, then delete it. I do have multiple mail services. I cannot tell for sure if the disappearing mail is confined to a specific service, but it seems like it is related to one of them: comcast.net. I have checked the setting on the webmail service for Comcast.net, and I don't see anything that would cause such automated deletions.

I had been searching for years to avoid my own camera video alarm to be placed into spam by my Mail spam filter. I finally understand the problem and have found a solution so I share it here. The camera, an Axis model, can be configured to send mail by connecting to a smtp server. The smtp server will send mail to an alias address that will be redirected to a final address. Then the final address will be retrieved from the Mail app. And in Mail app, the mail will likely not be stored online as the addition of images by these video will unnecessarily bite into iCloud storage plan (your mileage may vary) The source of the problem is that Mail/iCloud won't allow you to force a message as "not spam" if it has decided otherwise.

A person unknown to me got hold of my Apple ID (email) which is registered with iMessage. While as I understand, there should be no harm in some stranger having access to my email address (apart from the possibility of receiving spam emails). However, what's concerning me is that this person is sending me a truck-load of messages on iMessage. He/She is also constantly trying to reach me via FaceTime Audio/Video. I have politely requested them to state the intent of communication. However, the person appears to be engaging in irrelevant chatter. After repeatedly requesting to stop it, I pulled the plug by blocking the Apple ID. However, the person retaliated by creating a new Apple ID and starting all over again. I am quite bothered by the unnecessary communication which I find to be distracting. I have blocked the second Apple ID too and, in response, I have started receiving the communication from a yet another Apple ID. What official options do I have to stop this? Will reporting the Apple ID(s) in question enable Apple to take actions which can prevent this further?

I receive a lot of SMS/Message Scams (perhaps 3 or 4 per day). I assume it's related to something like the [flubot virus](https://exchange.telstra.com.au/getting-strange-missed-call-sms-messages-heres-how-to-avoid-the-flubot/) . I like turning the option under settings - notifications messages - customize notifications - unknown senders to off. This stops the phone notifying me when I receive sms from unknown senders. I also have an Apple Watch Series 2 which is set to mirror iphone notifications for messages. But on the Apple Watch I still receive these notifications. **How can I stop receiving notifications from unknown senders on the Apple Watch?** I was also wondering whether this was an issue specific to Series 2 given that it seemingly doesn't get software updates anymore. Ideally I don't want to turn off notifications from messages in general, as getting important sms on the Watch is one of the most important features for me.

How do I report spam **like this**, which appeared in Messages on my iPhone? My carrier is AT&T. As I understand it, we can tell from the screen shot (because of the "Text Message") that my carrier delivered the message via SMS, not over Apple's secure iMessage protocol. Which means this is a very different situation from https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/351754/spam-on-imessage-what-are-my-options?rq=1 . (I think the originator can have whatever email addresses they want appear both above and in the text "Text Message" - they could easily have been, and likely are, forged - the email addresses ending in .ec and .com.) I've had no success getting cooperation from AT&T. Just stonewalling and deception.  🤬 And the volume is going up.

Recently I got spam calls starting from a certain number, like 02072******. Is it possible for me to block all callers starting from 02072?

A while back I decided to save a robocaller to my contacts under the name "I is Scam". The interesting thing is I repeatedly get calls from the same exact contact, despite it showing up with different numbers located all across the nation. Every time I block one, it blocks that number only and I have to hit block for every single number despite all being named "I is Scam". **Not all** unknown numbers get linked to the contact, but many are. How does the iPhone connect different, fake numbers to an existing contact? Finally, is there anyway to harness this technology to block the contact **name** and not the **number**? Code answers welcome but simple answers preferred. Thanks in advance.