“Apple has reportedly begun the filtering of outbound messages sent via its MobileMe service,” John Leyden reports for The Register.
“The upshot is that whatever email client a MobileMe user uses, their message will be blocked without notification, reportedly even if the offending content in question contains mild political criticism,” Leyden reports. “Reg reader Mike Conley, who was the first to tell us of the problem, said that one of three offending messages he sent was blocked because it mentioned the phrase ‘growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels.’ An email about civil unrest in Greece about the sovereign debt crisis/austerity budget was also dropped. Conley realised there was a problem because he sends messages to himself via bcc. He complained and one of the offending messages was transmitted only for the problem to reappear days later. As a result, Conley has decided to stop using the service after having been a loyal fan for more than 10 years.”
Leyden writes, “Generally speaking we’re much more inclined to attribute this sort of thing to a technical screw-up rather than a deliberate policy. The alternative is truly chilly.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We just tested MobileMe, sending messages via both .mac and .me email address with the subject line text, “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” and the emails were not delivered. Following those, we sent messages via both .mac and .me email address with the subject line text, “innocuous test” and the emails were delivered promptly.
We also sent the following message via both .mac and .me email address with the subject line text, “forty-eight characters in subject line as a test” (same number of characters as “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels”) and the emails were delivered promptly.
As Leyden states, “It’s very likely there’s some innocent explanation to this,” but until Apple publicly and clearly explains what is going on here, Do not use Apple’s MobileMe email service.
We have sent a an inquiry to Apple and will update this article when and if they respond.
UPDATE: 11:44am EDT: We just resent messages via both .mac and .me email address with the subject line text, “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” and the emails were delivered. The emails we sent earlier that were exactly the same compositions still have not arrived.
Therefore, something has changed in the last half hour and/or the reliability of MobileMe email is questionable. Use at your own risk.