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Reporting Spam to Apple from your iCloud Mail account


Apple's iCloud Mail doesn't have an ISP Feedback Loop (the mechanism that sends spam reports back to the sender or sending email platform), but even so, I think it is good to tell them when you believe a particular email message to be spam.

It is very likely that Apple uses end user reports of "this is junk" or "this isn't junk" to decide whether or not future messages from that sender should be delivered to the inbox or to the junk folder. For sure, when you mark an email message as junk in your iCloud email account, subsequent messages from that same sender will be automatically routed to the junk folder. And chances are that if enough people vote "junk" against a particular sender, that sender's mail is more likely to go to the junk folder (or get blocked) overall.

Apple explains: "To mark a message as junk:

  • On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 7 or later, open the message, tap the Flag at the bottom, then tap Move to Junk.
  • On your Mac, select the message and click the Junk button in the Mail toolbar. Or you can drag the message to the Junk folder in the sidebar.
  • At iCloud.com, select the message, then click the Flag button and choose Move to Junk. Or you can drag the message to the Junk folder in the sidebar."
Here's more information on junk mail management in iCloud Mail's webmail UI, and that first help article explains how iCloud Mail's automatic junk mail filtering works. And did you know that iCloud Mail has support for email filtering rules? I didn't know that until I stumbled across this.

Side note: I complained the other day about how Microsoft's Outlook client puts the "delete" and "archive" buttons right next to each other. I think it's too easy to accidentally delete a message when you mean to archive it. Apple does better in this regard, allowing you to choose whether "archive" or "delete" is displayed (as they explain here, in the Delete Junk Mail section, near the bottom). Thanks, Apple!

Looking for information on best practices around sending email to iCloud Mail subscribers? Find that here. In a separate article, I explain how one sends mail to privaterelay.appleid.com subscribers.

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