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gogreen1

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 20, 2017
262
14
I've been getting spam email on my iPhone from "No Sender" lately from my comcast.net Xfinity account. I went into Xfinity and set up two email filters--one for emails with no sender and another for emails with sender addresses that do not include an "@" sign. Both rules include sending the emails to junk mail. "No Sender" emails are still coming through on my iPhone, but not on my iMac, MacBook Air, or iPad.

What can I do to block these emails on my iPhone (iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 16.6)?

Thanks.

IMG_1288.PNG
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,254
4,939
Not really an iPhone problem as you are setting up filters on Comcast's servers: the processing is done there. Sounds like the one filter is not quite right for all situations. Or you might have a filter setup in Mail on Macs that is catching these.

One thing to try is to bring up one of these problem emails on MacOS within Mail (can maybe do it via Comcast webpage as well, just don't know what options are there). Select the message and do a View > Message > Raw Source. This will "dump" the full header of an email and then can maybe find some value that Comcast's filters can deal with and might work better.
 

gogreen1

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 20, 2017
262
14
Thanks, NoBoMac. I can't figure out how to get at these messages' raw sources--Xfinity must be filtering them as they arrive because there are no messages like these in my Xfinity junk mail folder, and iPhone Mail doesn't let me see the email source. I should mention that on my Macs I use Thunderbird for email. I've tried forwarding the messages to other accounts, but they must be filtering them before they reach my inboxes. Any suggestions on how else I can view that information on these messages? 🤔
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,254
4,939
Thunderbird, it looks like select message then View > Message Source

And could be that Thunderbird's junk filters are doing their thing on top of this, so why you see Macs doing some filtering and not the iPhone (eg. doing a sequence of check mail on Mac, does filtering, but when go to iPhone later in the day, new emails there are not filtering).

Have not used Thunderbird in ages, so maybe a regular user of it can chime in.
 

HobeSoundDarryl

macrumors G5
Open Mail on a Mac, right click over "no sender" to see the actual email address and then make a Mail "rule" to send any email from that sender directly to junk/trash. In short, do your SPAM management yourself on your Mac and it will then deal with it on your iPhone too.

I have a rule in Mail, File, Preferences, Rules with MANY entries to basically filter my own recurring SPAM. It's quite easy to add new ones to filter with the rule. It would even be possible to make one that filters all mail with "FROM NO SENDER" but I would right click and see what the underlying email looks like (if one will show). If some of that email address is always the same and you know you would never want email from that source, you can make your rule purely filter that chunk to JUNK.

For example, suppose the right click under NO SENDER shows an email address like <unique something>@welovetospam.com You check the next one and the part before the @ is different but the part after is the same. You could make your rule like this...

FilterRule.jpg

In the future, when ANYTHING arrives from that URL, it is going to get auto-moved to your Junk folder, not showing in inbox for your Mac or iPhone.

If the bad guys alter the part after the @ a bit (and some will), just hover over the new URL, get on the rules screen, click the + in the circle next to the existing one and a new From:Contains @ <new URL you want to filter> will appear. Click OK and now your rule will filter for both URLs.

Besides "No Sender" another common line from the 2 you show in the post is "BEAT THE HEAT: Portable AC" If that is consistent in all such messages but FROM is regularly changing (or the part after @ is a mainstream thing like @gmail.com and you don't want to block any friends that might use @gmail.com), you could switch FROM to "MESSAGE BODY" and then put those words in the box. Then any email that includes that line would be redirected to junk.

The name of the rules game is to find some common content for all email you want to automatically junk that is unlikely to be content that would be associated with anyone from which you DO want to receive email... and then use that "definitely JUNK" content as the basis for your filtering rule entry: from, subject, message body, etc.

My rule like this currently has about 80 entries in it and I just about do NOT get any undesirable SPAM in my inbox. However, if a new one does arrive, it's easy to add another entry to my RULES list to stop it from showing again.

Another tip: have a main email addresses you use for main contacts and then 1+ less important email addresses (plenty of freebie options like gmail for this) you use when you need to share an email that seems like it COULD lead to spam. The less important ones can simply be jettisoned if one starts getting too much SPAM, replaced with a new one for less important situations that need an email address. Save the main one for friends/family/etc: trustworthy contacts unlikely to SPAM you.

Using one email address for everything- as many people are prone to do- guarantees that a lot of SPAM is going to come to that address. Rules can help deal with all that but that ability to easily dump an email address used for less important connections is a great way to cut out a lot of SPAM in one "delete."

It's been a while, but last time I checked, Comcast will let an individual set up at least about 5 email addresses to use. One main one and 4 to create, use for lessor/questionable contacts, then delete and re-create if too much spam starts coming to address #2-5.
 
Last edited:

dtmp

macrumors newbie
Sep 6, 2023
2
0
Seems that it would be easy to filter out an email that does not have a sender address. Like using "empty" for the check value.
I would also like a rule that filters out messages that are simply a single image. I get a lot of those also. If I could filter out all incoming images from http://*.space, that would go a long way.
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,254
4,939
Add to the what I posted in #4, my mother recently ran into a ton of spam hitting her mailbox. All had a "Return-Path" header field that resolved to .ru addresses. Filter I setup to look for that did the job. Think it's tough to forge a return-path field as the ISP is setting that up.
 

dtmp

macrumors newbie
Sep 6, 2023
2
0
I'd like to see that filter. I've had trouble getting some of them to work. I usually use the "apply" button and observe if the offending email is removed, if not I'll go back and try again. It's not very intuitive sometimes.
 
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