Apple deletes iCloud mails containing phrase 'barely legal teens'
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 26th Feb 2013 21:31 UTC
Apple Well paint me red and call me a girl scout. "In its latest push to get porn off your computer, Apple now deletes all iCloud emails that contain the phrase 'barely legal teens'. It doesn't send the messages to spam, or flag them, it just straight up deletes them, and there's nothing you can do about it." So, at least we can finally put that silly myth to rest that Apple respects users' privacy. They scan your emails, including attachments, just like everyone else.
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MOS6510
Member since:
2011-05-12

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.

Reply Parent Score: 3

novad Member since:
2010-06-10

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.


For this one I don't agree with you... There's parental control for that. If parents set an option to remove pron related Stuff... OK. No problem with that. BUT, removing legal content (Whatever this content is) without the consent of the user is another problem.

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.


Maybe. As I said. I would be curious to know exactly what happened... But I think that won't happen.

Reply Parent Score: 2

MOS6510 Member since:
2011-05-12

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.

Reply Parent Score: 3

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MOS6510 Member since:
2011-05-12

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.

Reply Parent Score: 2