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You say distributing underage porn when the definition of barely legal implies legality and has nothing to do with child porn?

W.
T.
F?

So the SOPA/PIPA/etc seem like a good idea as well? You know, if it's for unsubstantiated quasi-legal reasoning. with no recourse for allowing legitimate traffic through.

I can't wait till they start deleting emails from google or microsoft accounts because there could be something they aren't aware of inside the email...

Edited 2013-02-26 22:26 UTC

No, it's *not* understandable. Prohibiting underage porn, yes. But "barely legal" is *still* legal. Assuming that one automatically implying the other is dishonest and says more about the one who uses the argument than the people accused. And it's *not* Apples' job to play the nanny for their users!

Edited 2013-02-27 01:01 UTC

Of course it has to do with privacy. Apple fans' logic never ceases to amaze me.

Google has automated bots scanning your emails for targeted ads so you don't see irrelevant crap: PRIVACY ISSUE.

Apple has automated bots reading your emails to delete what it believes does not adhere to US puritanical views: NOPE, NOT A PRIVACY ISSUE YOU GUYS.

The world is crazy.

Agreed, it seems like in both cases you can easily argue there is a privacy issue. Which one bothers you more is of course dependant on what camp you are in.

Deleting, not marking as spam.

first it is "barely legal" and then which combo of word ?
the thing is that the email/document get silently erased.

So of course right now you don't think it is an issue, but hay, I've always been a fan of newspeak

SO you think it's a good thing Apple deletes any email containing the phrase "barely legal teens"? This is not spam filtering, it's deleting messages without asking you . What if it was an important email from a relative saying something like "Can you take me to the hospital tomorrow? Since my children are barely legal teens, they can't drive."

Did you try it yourself?

It doesn't look like Apple deletes all mails with these words, it only deletes spam messages with these words.

This said, if the "hospital" message registers as spam according to the filter you won't see it. So don't rely too much on mail.

I haven't tried myself because I don't have iCloud. Secondly, In the artice, the email was clearly not spam, it had a text attached that had that phrase. Thirdly, I don't think there's any other email service that does something like this: delete messages without any configuration by the user. If this is in fact, real, it would a much greater breach of privacy.

It is real. My iCloud mailbox is almost spam-free, thanks to Apple automatic spam deletion. The spam mails don't go in my spam folder they are filtered on the server. I consider it is a service Apple does for me.

I have a different e-mail address for personal mails, in part because I know that iCloud has mail filtering so I could miss something. If you don't ask them to nobody will see your e-mails, and to my knowledge Apple don't do any data collection.

Spam filtering training requires data collection.

Google has always been upfront with what kind of information it uses, and recently cam to great lengths of explaining how to get your information out of their systems. What other company does that?

I sent one from me private account to iCloud. Subject "barely legal teens" and "Porn!" in the body. Arrives just fine, no delay, no deletions.

It makes me wonder Thom also did this check.

of course he didn't.

Come on, it's a brave new world of "journalism". Verifying the veracity of a random claim? Ain't nobody got time for that.

Edited 2013-02-27 06:53 UTC

I know it's going against the trend, but it would be nice if some news was checked. Certainly if it's so easy and quick to do as this one.

No doubt the writer's email and Cult of Mac's one disappeared, but it would be more interesting to find what really happened rather than just copy news and present it as fact. They may use a certain email client that thinks it's spam, an ISP may do it, perhaps some US states do it, perhaps Apple does it but only to certain users under certain conditions.

Anything is possible. The only thing I can know for certain is that my emails arrive just fine and I'm seeing others report the same.

Is it only in some regions (US for example)?

Is it a scan on a regular basis that deletes the mail after it has been received (every day at 23:00 for example)?

Is it a technical error that deleted them instead of flagging them in an internal database (Which would mean that every mail is indexed by Apple what raises another problem)?

Or is it pure FUD?

I don't have the answer but I admit that I would love to know.

Cult of Mac confirmed it even though I assume they would tend to be more biased towards Apple.

(many more people confirm it doesn't happen)

I don't think Apple cares were you live, so if they really wanted to ban this subject-line they would enforce it on all users on their servers in the US. For me it's also easy to ban certain subject, but I have no clue how to do this based on country or US state. It makes it a lot more complicated and not 100% reliable.

Banning porn emails based on subjects is also very unreliable. And I don't think Apple should do it. Never mind privacy, but if Apple block porn and parents still find porn in the iCloud inbox they can blame Apple for not doing a good enough job. So they might as well not do it so they can't be blamed either.

I know it's a common spam subject, so it could be the may or may not be blocking it or perhaps they were temporary blocking it during a spam run.

I don't think there is an Apple parental control to block porn emails.

They desktop Mail client and, probably, the server iCloud does spam checking, but blocking emails is slightly different. Spam is unwanted, but emails with a pornographic topic may be wanted.

And that's, what I think, is the tricky bit. You can't 100% block all spam, but it's even harder to block non-spam by determining using automatic systems what it is about.

If Apple says they can protect your kids and it doesn't work they come off pretty bad. People will demand they will fix it, which they can't.

If Apple says they maybe, kind of, it's great when it works, protect your kids they will come off bad and it would look silly too. Even worse!

So it's best to, like almost every email provider, to not delete/block emails that aren't obviously spam.

Oh, YOU can filter on any subject, but you need to enter these rules yourself. There is no switch to have a bunch of Apple filters kick in to action.

Even if there were people would find out and figure out how to bypass them. If "barely legal teens" stops you you can use "blt" or "!UEGIUG!EGUWGgdud".

Apparently "barely legal teens" is something that could push an email over the "is it spam or is it not" threshold.

I submitted a link to an article explaining it, but my submission got deleted without any notice.

It's a funny world.

Google does.

Their advertising network is very sophisticated. My mother recently saw on a home shopping network on TV a bit about a particular brand of pans, and asked me to go to the web page for it. Ever since then a very high proportion of adverts I've seen on the web have been for those specific pans. I have two windows open on OSNews right now, and both are showing adverts for those pans. It feels like for the last week at least 1/3rd of the adverts I've seen have been those ones.

Google clearly and most definitely is selling my screen to third parties.

Google's ad network is linked into Gmail. They target ads there based on the content of emails you have received. It's the same ad network.

You said that they sell you data, when in fact they don't.

Actually it's the website owners that sell that space. And it's not your space, it's the space that you agree to see in order to access content for free.

You may not like Google tracking you, but that is not a reason to make false claims. And if you know that Google does not sell your data, then that statement is a blatant lie.

PS: If you don't want Google to track you, then just opt-out of the targeted advertising(in Google's privacy panel). Like I did.

"For now... that is, until Apple's pervasive "we know what's best for you" arrogance emboldens them to the point where they start modifying DNS settings on iOS devices, to block sites Apple objects to. That would be no less-defensible than how Apple manages the appstore - it's Apple's sandbox after all, so they make the rules, right?"

Which is exactly the point where guys like you stop being credible: when you blame Apple for something you think they could eventually do someday without having anything to sustain this possibility apart from your own sentiment against Apple. Lame.