“Apple is apparently performing some content-based iCloud e-mail filtering, resulting in e-mails that never arrive to their intended destination,” Casey Johnston reports for Ars Technica. “As detailed by Macworld, e-mails that included a particular phrase, even in a zipped PDF file, were prevented from getting to the intended recipient. This was regardless of whether the message was from a known sender, indicating that Apple is placing a pretty judging eye on what passes through its servers.”
“Apple acknowledged the existence of the filter, telling Ars (and Macworld), ‘Occasionally, automated spam filters may incorrectly block legitimate email. If the customer feels that a legitimate message is blocked, we encourage customers to report it to AppleCare,'” Johnston reports. “But, as Macworld points out, the problem is precisely that these e-mails are blinked out of existence the second they’re sent. Customers have no way of knowing what they’re not receiving unless the sender manages to follow up via another medium, or with more e-mails that don’t contain trigger phrases.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s Apple’s free service and they can do what they want, but this type of stupidity is going to lose them users, not gain them.
Perhaps that’s for the best, since Apple still can’t manage to keep their servers online with the type reliability users should expect. Even failing BlackBerry does a better job.
Hey, Apple, by the way, you’re no longer throwing the hammer, you’ve become the guy on the screen.
Wake up before it’s too late, Tim.
1984 Apple’s Macintosh Commercial from Vitaly Kalenik on Vimeo.
To be perfectly clear: The problem is not that Apple is spam filtering, the problem is that Apple is never delivering the emails to our Junk boxes for users’ inspection. Spam filters are not perfect. We find perfectly legitimate email in our Junk boxes with regularity. Messages have to be delivered in order for users to have confidence in the service.
