“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.
in the u.s., using various combinations of my gmail, mac and work accounts for to and from accounts, subject line and text i NEVER get the message when sent from .mac with the suggested subject line but vanilla text in body and always getting it when sent from the other two. the recipient address does not change anything.
Tested it here in US with Mobileme acct – no problem – messages received right away.
Tested it here in US with my MobileMe acct – message NOT received AT ALL.
Most of the readers here seem to be against the nanny state in reference to government as am I. I also do not want any company deciding what my private e-mail account can contain as long as it is not illegal.
Same thing with iOS apps. Some Zinio content that is available on the Mac is not available on iOS devices. It’s not Zinio- it’s Apple.
Not cool.
I sent “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” using mobile me and it went right through. I thought maybe it went through because I was sending it to myself, so I sent it to a gmail account and it went through as well.
I just sent emails to & from my Yahoo & .me accounts – success all around
I tried this as well. Tried multiple combinations from my .me account to gmail and work with multiple cominations of subject/body/etc with the text “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels”. All messages went through.
I used the phrase “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” in subject line.
Sent out email via .mac email address with the supposed censored subject line, and it arrived in my inbox almost instantaneously.
Hey, MDN, how ’bout not jumping to conclusions / making (wrong!) assumptions about things!!!
Glad it works for you. Wish that made it for for me too, but alas, it doesn’t.
I just tested sending to myself with my MobileMe account and the message was NOT delivered. So, it would seem the behavior is as the article suggests, but not consistently so.
Hanlon’s razor comes to mind: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
This isn’t the first time the MobileMe email service was operating in a flakey manner, so let’s not assume Apple is applying some sort of content filter before we consider that something is simply broken.
In short, let’s see what Apple has to say about this before we all jump to conclusions.
Thanks for the FUD, MDN.
maybe if you tried to research the story… you’d find out the story is actually old. and you CAN find that prior to the article MDN posted… you could reproduce it.
if you read the update, you’d see that the OLD messages will not go through, but it looks like the filter has been removed.
Just sent to and from @me address from and to a non-@me address a message containing “English Defense League immigrant treatment islamophobic failure of multiculturalism.”
No constraints on this language.
Just tested this myself going between my .Mac address and my company address.
No discernible delay and delivered in 39 seconds.
Look guys…
MMe messes up sometimes with messages being delayed. If you take the number of messages sent in a day, if 1 in 100,000 are delayed, there are thousands of delays per day – even one in 1 million will result in 100s to 1000s of delays per day.
Sooner or later it the laws of probability will produce something such as this, where the email sent appears to be politically motivated. This is not to say that there definitively is NOT a censorship going on, only that the APPEARANCE of such is a possibility on just statistical – probabilistic order.
Before jumping the gun, is there any other evidence of censorship? Any other messages with political content blocked?
Get a grip before jumping on tabloid headlines!
Exactly, thanks for the sanity check.
Thanks for the support. 🙂
This is a classic example of jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. I do understand the concern. But as Buffalo Springfield told us, “Paranoia strikes deep!” If things keep going in the direction they’re presently headed, we will have to combat censorship from our ISPs. But for now, I think we’re still OK.
Well, I’ve tried it twice from my .mac to my work – one earlier and one just now. Neither have made it. But an email with “Growing Hostility between Brussels and Frankfurt” made it out just fine. So either this is a very dumb filter or it is simply a fine little glitch someone has found. I think it is more likely the latter.
Not good at all!
Either Apple is censoring or MobileMe email sucks. Either way Apple is looking like Micrsoft and Google combined on this one. Once you lose trust it’s hard to recover. And I am a big Apple fan. Right now I am “there in the corner, losing my reli…”.
Apple may be testing some NSA/CIA software filters to identify and optionally block terrorist or activist communications or new spam filters and the phrase in question just triggered the system. Personally, I’d be delighted if Mobile Me could block all email that begins “Dearest One…” or Meet singles in your area.
I just sent myself an email from MobileMe to another email address of mine the “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” subject line and it was delivered just fine…
And has anyone ever thought that the phrase just might be tripping a spam filter for some reason?
Do you REALLY THINK Apple is filtering criticism of Frankfurt and Brussels???
I am very much opposed to censorship.
When my freedom of speech is inhibited in private conversation, I will go absolutely ape shit!
This better not be real!
Took a minute, but my message with a subject of “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” did arrive properly. Message sent from MobileMe online, not through Mail.app.
Just sent “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” and “growing hostility against Washington and Austin” to my gmail account, work account and a friend’s yahoo mail account. all came through great with just a bit or delay on the second subject line test.
Get a grip folks.
Much ado about nothing.
No problem here in the UK. I wonder if it’s being labelled as junk mail for some people.
“increasing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” made it through…
“growing hostility between Frankfurt and Brussels” made it through
So, CLEARLY THIS IS A GLITCH! Not some kind of Big Brother Filtering. CODE IS HUGE! Man’s ability to fully understand his binary creation is limited!
I’m going to continue to use my mail.
Let me know if you don’t receive any email I send you!
I hear that there is growing hostility against Brussels and Frankfurt.
I sent “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” in the subject and I just received an email back saying…”You’re not kidding”….go figure.
I just send a message to myself with “growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels” as both the subject line, and the message body, and it was delivered immediately.