iCloud is silently deleting mail

A little over a week ago I ordered a batch of Amazon e-gift cards from my credit unions rewards website, using points from my credit card.  These were to be delivered by email.  Days passed and I hadn’t heard from anyone about the order (other than the original order confirmation email).

After a few days where it didn’t look like anything was happening with the e-gift cards, I got in touch with my bank’s reward center customer service department.  They told me to check my spam folders.

My email is set up this way:  I own my own domain name, so I have the MX record pointing to Google’s mail servers (Google Apps, where they host your domain’s email, etc).  I extensively use Apple products, including iCloud on my iPhone.  Since iCloud has Push email, I prefer to use it instead of connecting directly to gmail periodically to pull new mail.  So, in my GMail settings, I actually forward all my email from my personal domain (going through Google’s GMail service) to my address@me.com, with the original copy going into my GMail Trash folder.  I have both accounts set up on my Mac and iPhone, but generally only pay attention to the iCloud account (since it should contain everything that has filtered through GMail).  The result is that I get the advantage of Google’s excellent Spam filtering capabilities, where all the likely spam ends up in a Junk folder that I can search through, in the event that I miss an important email, and I get the speed of Push email.

Unfortunately, Customer Service couldn’t tell me the email address that the emails would be coming from.  So, I manually looked through tons of spam, but could not find the message with the e-gift cards.  Note:  I checked for Junk on my Mac (I just flag it as junk, it stays in the Inbox) and the Spam folder on my GMail account.  Tons of stuff in GMail’s Spam folder, but nothing related to my gift cards.  Junk in my iCloud was very light (thanks mostly to GMail’s filtering).

As a side note:  I don’t have any rules on my Mac to do anything with incoming mail, except the default Apple News rule.  There are no Filters on my GMail account.

After going back and forth with the customer service center for several more days, they were finally able to tell me the email address it would be coming from.  I searched on my Mac and found it… in my GMail TRASH folder.

After giving it some thought, I can only conclude this:

1. The email made it to GMail.
2. GMail forwarded it to my me.com address.
3. GMail put it in the trash (as it is configured to do after forwarding it).
4. Apple’s servers silently deleted the email.

I can’t say this is 100% what happened, but feel relatively certain because I found three copies of these emails sent at different times over the last week, the first within minutes of the order, the second after a couple of days, and the third after three more days, all of which were in my GMail trash folder.

So, unless Apple has a rogue admin that is collecting these e-gift card emails for personal use, I assume that Apple has some sort of aggressive system in place to block spam (even though it doesn’t have any settings).

If anyone from Apple happens to read this, here’s what the email looks like that was silently dropped.  There’s nothing in the raw headers related to Spam score or anything similar.

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From: Amazon.com <gc@vcdelivery.com> Subject: Amazon.com gift Date: Redacted JACK OF ALL I.T., You’ve received a eGift card from Amazon.com. Please open the link below to verify receipt of your gift card and to view it from your browser window or smartphone: eGift Card Link: https://www.vcdelivery.com/Cert/gc.aspx?r=hashed_string_redacted If clicking the link doesn’t work, copy and paste the URL into your browser address bar. You’ll need to be sure to copy the entire link for the eGift card to display properly. Your eGift card may be redeemed in-store and/or online (check your eGift card for redemption limitations). 1. To redeem your eGift Card in-store:     a. Print and present your eGift card. -or- b. Display the eGift card on your phone (phone must be Internet capable). 2. To redeem your eGift Card online:     a. Open the eGift card link and use the eGift card ID (located under the gift card image or barcode if present). If you have any problems retrieving your eGift card(s), please email support@vcdelivery.com and we will assist you.

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Anyhow, I’ve chosen to essentially stop forwarding from GMail to iCloud and simply use GMail exclusively for now.

If anyone can come up with a good explanation other than the one I’ve mentioned, I’d love to hear it.

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