Dealing with marketing emails and macOS mail. If only rules worked.

[PinkyMacGodess]

I was getting marketing emails that I no longer wanted to see. The approved way is to 'unsubscribe', right. So I did the 'right thing', and now am being ruthlessly punished for it. (Or, in an apparent ideal world we don't live in, setup a rule/filter.)

So part of this is a rant about macOS Mail. Rules are a joke. Mail Rules *should* be replicated to all a users devices, but they aren't. Rules should actually run as the messages are being received, and they aren't.

I'm getting 40 to 50 messages (or more) a day that started the day I unsubscribed. Some are going into the Junk folder(s) yet many are hanging around in the Inbox. I have created dozens of new Rules on my two most used macs, hopefully dealing with the inundation of junk, but the rules don't seem to run. So many messages I KNOW I have a rule for and yet it doesn't run.

I sent 'feedback' to Apple, but I've gotten the idea that thousands have and nothing has changed. If anything, as one person wrote, macOS Mail has actually gotten worse.

What really needs to happen is a mail filtering program/system that sifts the actual headers and determines the actual source of the email and blocks that address, or domain. Blocking spoofed email domains is unproductive as it also could (if rules actually worked) block legitimate messages.

And I am beyond pissed that a company I received emails from, and likely also bought products from, would give or sell my email addresses to scammers and spammers. (The same thing is happening with Hotmail/Outlook.com, but it seems to be working better there)

It ought to be illegal to do 'punish' people that unsubscribe, and dammit, macOS Mail SHOULD WORK BETTER!!!

And, sure, iCloud.com does support rules, but they are not as powerful (sounds like a joke to say that about macOS Mail rules) as macOS Mail. Ideally, the rules I create on a macOS system *should* propagate to the 'mothership' iCloud account. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Come on Apple! BE BETTER!!!

 

[saudor]

I create account aliases like accounts001 and use those for semi useful stuff. Once it gets annoying (as the "legit" companies sell off your email), i'll delete it and do accounts002.

For useless stuff, i just use 10 minute email

And yeah unsubscribe is basically a link that tells them you're using the email address. Spam control is best on gmail/google. Outlook is OK but i find a ton of legit email gets thrown in there.
Apple/iCloud is an absolute joke.

 

[pshufd]

I've had this problem in the past month, mainly coming through my GMail account. I was even getting phone calls - one Forex guy said I signed up for a Forex trading seminar and watched it and I said I did no such thing. Perhaps someone used my email address to sign up for something but it wasn't me. I have tried Report Spam, Unsubscribe and Report Spam and now I'm using email filters in GMail. I am going to use the filters in the Mail application as well. My usual problem is Yahoo Mail spam which I haven't been getting for a while.

I wish that these folks would just go away.

 

[Kenny99]

If you use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media and you read an article or like an article you could be signing up for these emails. These sites may be grabbing your information and phone number.I am very careful about this and still get those emails and calls. Just unsubscribe and block the calls.

 

[pshufd]

If you use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media and you read an article or like an article you could be signing up for these emails. These sites may be grabbing your information and phone number.I am very careful about this and still get those emails and calls. Just unsubscribe and block the calls.

This is what I do but I shouldn't have to. Unfortunately I have a very short email address that I got in the 1990s when they were easy to get and I like to use it to give out to people as it's easy to say. But a lot of people use it as a garbage email account because it is so short. I get cafe receipts, receipts from Macy's, spotify, pandora, all kinds of places. I can be a pain in the neck and screw with their account but it's not worth the effort. The ones where they say you signed up for this or you attended this are the strangest though.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I create account aliases like accounts001 and use those for semi useful stuff. Once it gets annoying (as the "legit" companies sell off your email), i'll delete it and do accounts002.

For useless stuff, i just use 10 minute email

And yeah unsubscribe is basically a link that tells them you're using the email address. Spam control is best on gmail/google. Outlook is OK but i find a ton of legit email gets thrown in there.
Apple/iCloud is an absolute joke.

I get what you are saying, and these were companies I legitimately dealt with, and (HAH!) trusted. I should just use the iCloud Hide My Email, but it's a PITA mostly so far it seems.

I DID have a 'burner address', but ended up using it for other more legitimate things eventually. But good grief, I use my *real email* to make interactions easier, and when I unsubscribe they toss me to the wolves? I guess there is no trusting anyone, which is far closer to the truth than I'd like to admit.

Oh, and on Hide My Email, it is so stupid the two words they sometimes link. One I found a little distasteful, and yet it kept offering it and another really lame one over and over. I think I turned it off out of frustration.

Come on Apple BE BETTER!!

Thanks for the replies. I'll try HME again and see if it's any better, but for already established uses of my email addresses, I WANT Apple to FIX RULES!!! Or if they can't, just admit it and remove the useless feature.

 

[KaliYoni]

I should just use the iCloud Hide My Email, but it's a PITA mostly so far it seems.

If you feel comfortable with DuckDuckGo (both the company and its products), it has a very easy to use single-use email address generator that allows an unlimited number of addresses to be created. I've been using it for several months as a replacement for Yahoo's disposable email addresses. One advantage over Yahoo and Google is that the single-use addresses do not require the use of a "base" name that is common to all the addresses.

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ETA:

DuckDuckGo Email Protection

Our free email forwarding service removes multiple types of hidden trackers and lets you hide your personal email address online.

duckduckgo.com

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

If you feel comfortable with DuckDuckGo (both the company and its products), it has a very easy to use single-use email address generator that allows an unlimited number of addresses to be created. I've been using it for several months as a replacement for Yahoo's disposable email addresses. One advantage over Yahoo and Google is that the single-use addresses do not require the use of a "base" name that is common to all the addresses.

I was not aware they had that service. I'll look into it. Thanks!

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Tip: Keep making rules for the junk, but to get them to run, go into an existing rule and change the domain in the 'contains' line, and sake it. Click 'Apply', and *POOF* the ones you have rules for are gone. Then create rules for the ones that don't go away, and remember to change the edited rule back to it's proper info. Stinks to have to do that, but it does seem to work well. So Apple DOES have a system that works, but just doesn't.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Rules in Mail are a holdover from the days when that was the only way to receive it…other than webmail. I don't know why anyone with more than one device would try to use rules on incoming messages in Mail.

It took a while but the OP finally got around to indicating that the main issue is with iCloud-based email. Server-based rules work well, across all devices, at the email hosting services that provide a decent version of them.