“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.
It’s the government doing it.
I have not sent this particular test message since so many others already have. But I had noted a couple days ago that several of my MM emails were not being received. I had thought it was a problem with the particular location (computer). I don’t remember the content.
I will propose a scenario (likely or not) that some recent clandestine court order to allow the government to monitor emails for particular words/ideas may have been improperly implemented causing this issue where email users are now alerted. It is possible that only certain specific Apple servers were involved which is why some people appear to have no problems, while others do. I would agree that this is potentially a very bad development. It may have been going on for years, but without anyone being aware since there were no technical glitches prior to this one.
I hope Apple responds credibly to this issue.
…and I don’t believe this is a malfunctioning spam filter. It just doesn’t have the feel for any kind of spam filtering issue to me, though Apple could say that it is. Really, in well over 11 years using iTools, .Mac, and MM email, I cannot personally recall one issue of spam filtering for outgoing mail.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2704340?threadID=2704340
Earlier this year.
Thanks, FTB. Read it. I can see my emails have been too mild. Nonetheless, this remains a serious issue. I hope that pressure will get Apple to modify what it is doing… or how it is doing it.
I just tried it (for real this time) with the ‘growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels’ phrase in the subject line and it went through instantly.
As one poster mentioned…maybe it is a Canada thing though I doubt it.
In anycase why would Apple fool around like this? There is only a downside to it, nothing positive….so I call hoax.
Rumors of widespread email surveillance have existed for years. I have been tempted on more than one occasion to begin adding an invisible “signature” containing a few dozen highly-inflammatory words and phrases to all my outgoing email just to see if I ever get a knock on my door. Of course, if such a thing ever happened, all of my recipients could potentially be targeted as well. This is what stops me, but it certainly would be fascinating to test the hypothesis that we are all under electronic surveillance 24 hours a day.
As of 4:45 Eastern time, both sending and receiving worked fine for me in the US.
I found out the hard way about two months ago that e-mail’s containing the phrase “Strip Club” was being blocked, while “Gentelman’s Club” was not.
just tried it and there was no problem. Went through instantly.
I sometimes find that mail doesn’t go through or goes through very slowly. I’ll click on something and get a message saying an email was just sent to me but I don’t see it for days if at all. Other things come through instantly. I wonder if it has something to do with our creaky email system. Though that doesn’t address the sensitivity to content.
This has been discussed on Macintouch since June. Nice lack of attribution by The Register. I’d be wary about calling the issue FUD based on typing in one phrase. It’s quite likely Apple has modified their outgoing mail filter settings to pass the phrase shown by now.
if you read the article…. they DID…..
half way down their article.
“Conloy started a thread on the problem on an Apple user forum. The post was picked up by Reg reader Harris Upham, who confirmed that censorship seems to be taking place.”
click on the thread… takes you to MIT.
I don`t know about filtering, but I have had problems with .me webmail loading on my Mac at home. Strangely enough I have no problem having it load on the peecee at school.
why would anyone ever want to filter outbound mail? If it’s outbound it’s not spam, unless you are a spammer…
I tried the following…
(1) Send email with Subject and body with ‘growing hostility against Frankfurt and Brussels’ from one .me account to another .me. account -> No luck.
(2) Send email with Subject and body with “Test” from one .me account to another .me. account -> Works fine!!
Retried both # 1 and #2 numerous times throughout the day –> same results.
As much as I love apple products, this is exactly the type of thing I worry about when a tech company becomes too large and begins exercising it’s power beyond acceptable realms. IMHO, this is very concerning if not outright scary. Apple def should publicly explain this.
No, they shouldn’t. That’s just engaging in paranoid debate. You never engage in debate with someone who’s more interested in being right than actually finding out the truth.
And Apple responding will bring more bad PR on them and drag it out into the mass media. Unless it makes mainstream media all by itself, Apple shouldn’t say a thing.
This is a filtering glitch. Apple has no benefit from politically filtering email. If they wanted do, you’d find a lot more mail was being filtered than a carefully crafted subject on Frankfurt and Brussels.
i agree. There’s something wrong. I was forwarding an account to me.com and all Facebook emails never made it to ME. Checked junk and spam on both ends. The Facebook emails are in the original mailbox. Other msgs get forwarded! I may just switch to gmail for everything. This is ridiculous!