How to prevent blocked emails from appearing in Apple Mail inboxes and bounce them back to senders?

Question

Level 1

64 points

How to prevent blocked emails from appearing in Apple Mail inboxes and bounce them back to senders?

I have my blocked email settings set to "Move to trash" yet these emails still show up in my inbox and in my Today, Unread, Yesterday, and all other applicable Smart Mailboxes.

What is the purpose of blocked email filtering if they show up in all our mailboxes, JUST LIKE THEY WOULD IF THEY WERE NOT BLOCKED NOR FILTERED?

The only apparent action seems to be a red strike through icon assigned to the email but all these email marketers still get to display their spam trash advertisement emails to us just like they would if it were not labeled Blocked.

Why can we no longer bounce blocked emails back to the senders like we used to be able to do.

Apple seems to be attacking us with any form of commercial entity that exists. This is another example of this. The ability to PREVENT the sender from sending an email to us is possible. Apple seems to be refusing to use it.

How to we block email from blocked senders so it doesn't show up in our inboxes and the senders get messages saying they are blocked?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Apple Mail still displaying blocked emails. How do we remove these entirely from our email inboxes? Can we bounce or return these to senders so they know we are blocking them?

MacBook Pro (M5, 2025)

Posted on Dec 1, 2025 9:28 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 1, 2025 11:19 AM in response to J Bertram

J Bertram wrote:

Ok,

So how do we prevent all these commercial emails from getting through to our inboxes? There seems to be absolutely no difference between a blocked email and a non blocked email. They come through just like unblocked emails.

Let’s distinguish between legitimate commercial email and true spam.

For a legitimate email, such as from a real business such as Amazon, REI, Best Buy, etc, just hit the “Unsubscribe” button somewhere in the email. By law the business must stop sending you email.

For random spam there is no point in blocking the email, because spammers never, ever, use the same sending address twice. So blocking it only wastes storage space on your device and provides no benefit.

And, as IdrisSeabright pointed out, bouncing just confirms that your email address is valid, so bouncing it means you will get more spam.

The other considerations are dependent who your mail provider is. Blocking is done at the server, not on your device. For iCloud, if you move a message to Junk several times future messages from that sender will go to Junk immediately. For other email providers contact their support.

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Answer 2

Dec 1, 2025 9:44 AM in response to J Bertram

J Bertram wrote:

Why can we no longer bounce blocked emails back to the senders like we used to be able to do.

There are a couple of reasons:

It can confirm to a spammer that your address is valid. Spammers send emails to thousands/millions of computer-generated addresses without knowing which are real and which aren't.
In many cases, the address the email would bounce back to is spoofed or invalid.
It wastes network bandwidth.

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Answer 3

J Bertram Author

Level 1

64 points

Dec 1, 2025 9:59 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

Ok,

So how do we prevent all these commercial emails from getting through to our inboxes? There seems to be absolutely no difference between a blocked email and a non blocked email. They come through just like unblocked emails.

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Answer 4

Dec 1, 2025 10:08 AM in response to J Bertram

J Bertram wrote:

Ok,

So how do we prevent all these commercial emails from getting through to our inboxes? There seems to be absolutely no difference between a blocked email and a non blocked email. They come through just like unblocked emails.

I can't answer that for you as I don't use Apple Mail.

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