How do I find out if Apple Mail is bouncing incoming emails without notifiying me?

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77 points

How do I find out if Apple Mail is bouncing incoming emails without notifiying me?

I belong to an old school email list on a topic of interest to me (Genealogy). The mail server for the list keeps discontinuing my subscription to the list saying it is getting too many bounces from my account. How do I know if Apple Mail is actually bouncing incoming email? I get no notifications that any email is bouncing. I have plenty of storage through iCloud, so that is not the issue. Anyone have any ideas how to investigate this? Thanks in advance!

Posted on Aug 25, 2025 03:37 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 25, 2025 03:40 PM in response to Kurt Cowling

Apple Mail itself doesn’t bounce emails, it only shows what your email provider delivers. If your genealogy list says it’s getting bounces, those are coming from your provider’s server, not from the Mail app. The best way to check is to log in directly to iCloud Mail at iCloud.com and see if those messages are landing in Junk, Trash, or being filtered by a rule. If they aren’t there, then the server is likely rejecting them before they ever reach you. In that case, you’ll want to contact Apple Support and ask if iCloud is blocking or rejecting messages from that list’s server. Another option is to try subscribing to the list with a different email account (like Gmail) to see if the issue goes away.

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Answer 2

Aug 25, 2025 03:43 PM in response to Kurt Cowling

Is the mailing list sender in your contacts? if not, add it.

More generally…

Find another way to get the messages. Or a mail server with more lax policies. Mailing lists tend to get blocked.

As for confirming the bounce and its details, you’ll need a copy of the bounce from the list server.

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Answer 3

Kurt Cowling Author

Level 1

77 points

Aug 25, 2025 04:01 PM in response to Kurt Cowling

Thank you both for your very quick replies. Sorry if I didn't make it clear but the email address I used to subscribe is my iCloud address.

I have the list server email address in my contacts, but the way the messages come in is that the senders' addresses are in the "from" spot and the list email address is in the "reply to" spot. I have no way to include every possible list subscriber in my contacts. They occasionally were going to junk, although I would move them to my inbox. Not sure if that actually "teaches" the Mail app that they are not junk. I also don't think that qualifies as a bounce.

I may try to change my subscription to another email provider like gmail or yahoo just to sidestep the issue, but it makes me wonder what is happening to incoming emails at my iCloud address that I don't even know about...

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Answer 4

Kurt Cowling Author

Level 1

77 points

Aug 25, 2025 04:43 PM in response to MrHoffman

Not multiple "from" addresses in the same email, but each email has the original sender in the "from" field so the "from" field could contain any one of the subscribers addresses.

From: original sender's personal email address (so this is different in every email that comes from a different subscriber to the list)

Reply to: list email address

To: my subscribing email address

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Answer 5

Aug 25, 2025 04:26 PM in response to Kurt Cowling

Multiple from addresses? That certainly seems broken.

Multiple to addresses are unfortunately common.

Ask the sender to specify the to recipients as bcc, top.

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