I’m getting a fair amount of spam email in Mac Mail these days. I’m trying to manage using “mute” and “block sender”. Whilst this seems pretty good I do still get spam email through from senders I’ve already blocked. Is this a fault?
I’m ok with muting and blocking spam email on a one by one basis but finding it frustrating when mail still reaches me that I’ve already blocked. I know I’ve already blocked the sender because when I try to block it the drop down menu says “unblock this sender”.
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Peter Hardaker
The "Mute" function just stops notifications for an email conversation. The messages still arrive as replies to the conversation, you just don't get bothered by the notification. See https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/mute-conversations-mlhl24b596f2/mac
The "Block Sender" function is closer to what you want. But it still won't stop spam. It is more for blocking people you know, like someone harassing you, than spam. Go to Mail, Settings, Junk Mail and click "Blocked" at the top. Then you can set what happens to email from blocked addresses. Perhaps you have it set to still go to your inbox?
But either way, spam doesn't come from consistent email addresses. It comes from random FAKE email addresses. So if you blocked the email address for one message, the next one will come from a different address anyway. Chances are the address was completely fake, or it was so real person's email address that was used, but from someone you don't know and who had nothing to do with the spam.
The real way to deal with spam is to have a good email provider. If you are using iCloud for email, then that's one of the good ones. This simply means that the service is large enough to see a ton of email flowing through the Internet and can recognize mass email messages from spammers and block them for everyone. Plus, they care about the quality of their email service. Many ISPs provide free email addresses for your use by don't seem to care about blocking spam with the latest technology.
Now some spam will always still get through no matter how good the email provider is. But if you are on iCloud or Google or some non-free quality email provider, you can be sure that the bulk of them aren't getting to you. For instance, if you get 10 or 20 spam messages per day in your inbox then there are probably 100 or 1000 that are not making it to your inbox.
See https://macmost.com/how-to-really-stop-getting-spam-email.html
Thanks Gary. I better understand things now. I use iCloud so am obviously getting far fewer spam emails than I otherwise would. Keep up the good work and I regularly pass on your details to friends and family. Much appreciated.