Filed under: Internet, MobileMe
MobileMe silently filtering email to spamcop.net
According to Mac OS X Hints, if you're trying to send an email to someone with a spamcop.net email address with your MobileMe account, chances are the message will never arrive, and you won't be notified.
What's worse, apparently if you're sending the message to a distribution list, and only one of those recipients has an address at spamcop.net, nobody will receive the message.
Apparently the problem has been happening for months, since Apple moved everyone from .Mac to MobileMe. A participant in the Apple Discussions thread notes that it's common for service providers to filter their outgoing mail by domain in order to avoid being blacklisted. So far, only spamcop.net appears to be affected.
A workaround for now would be to try to send the message using a different email account. We'll let you know if Apple offers a fix in the meantime.
Update: Friendly reader Jason sent me a detailed explanation about why this might be. In a misguided attempt to control their individual load of spam, some users choose to forward all their MobileMe mail to a spamcop.net address. Spamcop, unfortunately, thinks the "spam" originated at MobileMe, not the actual origin of the spammy badness. So, MobileMe, to combat this, forbids forwarding to domains like Spamcop in order to avoid being blacklisted. There's nothing sinister going on here, just honest network administrators doing what they can with what they've got. Thanks, Jason!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Captn Apollo said 3:23PM on 12-05-2008
I think it is more than SpamCop stuff... I have many contacts that live in Africa, but if they try and send an email to me and have included others in the email as well MobileMe has been automatically filtering it... I don't think it is right and I have no way to correct it.
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Jeremy said 3:52PM on 12-05-2008
This may or may not be related but ever since MobileMe went live I have received an email every month or so that is addressed to me yet clearly was not intended to be sent to me by the sender.
This is not the typical spam or fake emails hoping you will respond, these are real, other MobileMe members that I have contacted and sent along their email to the correct party since it ended up in my mailbox.
So MobileMe clearly has some fairly severe mail filtering problems as it is. This never, ever happened to me in all the years I was a .Mac member, but since MobileMe, it's a fairly regular occurance.
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Jim said 4:41PM on 12-05-2008
I wonder also, if this is what's causing Mobile me mail to take so long to send. When I go to send an email, from apple mail, it seems like forever before it leaves. I don't remember having this problem with .Mac.
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Don said 7:16PM on 12-05-2008
I have an open ticket with Apple support just about this starting back in June/July. I cannot, never been able to, send an email from my work email to my MobileMe account. They told me they white-listed my work email server's IPs and it still never gets delivered. I'm glad this is getting more attention.
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Fritz Laurel said 10:48PM on 12-05-2008
1) yet another reason not to use MobileMe.
2) companies that blacklist should be avoided anyway.
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