Apple still opaquely filtering iCloud emails that contain spammy phrases
Apple has long been filtering/censoring email messages sent through their service, originally .Mac, then MobileMe, and now iCloud. Charitably, this could be viewed as just another layer of anti-spam, however the lack of transparency remains concerning. This issue was brought back into the spotlight when a Steven G., a developer of screenplay writing software, received a complaint from a customer who was having trouble delivering a script. Robert X. Cringely of Infoworld quotes the developer:
The offending line was "barely legal teens", which sounds like something found in porn-spam, but to both test and highlight the problem:
According to Lex Friedman and Dan Moren of Macworld, who verified the issue, you won’t have trouble sending messages with these phrases, as the filtering applies only to inbound mail, but you won't be able to receive anything with any blacklisted phrases, even if they're contained in PDF or ZIP attachments.
This is troubling, and is not a new practice for Apple. It casts doubt on the reliability of iCloud as a primary email service. While you might not use the phrase “barely legal teens” in your regular correspondence, it’s ultimately an arbitrary restrcition. The real problem is that we don’t know all of the phrases that Apple filters. Because of that, we can’t trust that all of our email will arrive, and if that’s the case, you might want to look elsewhere for your email needs.
If Apple were to simply move the emails to junk, rather than obliterating them, there'd be no issue. Any false-positives could be found and rescued. The issue is, and remains, transparency -- a good idea implemented in a bad way.
What do you think? Is Apple overreaching, or just practicing aggressive spam filtering? If you use iCloud email, does this make you wary?
Source: Infoworld, Macworld UK, Macworld
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Joseph Keller is the former Editor in Chief of iMore. An Apple user for almost 20 years, he spends his time learning the ins and outs of iOS and macOS, always finding ways of getting the most out of his iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac.