Apple’s email apps and services don’t allow users to completely block senders. If someone is sending you messages you don’t want to receive, tough. You’re going to get them.

The iCloud.com website’s Mail app doesn’t have a sender block mechanism. Instead, it offers a way to create rules based on each message’s attributes, such as its sender. Rules support these actions:

  • Move to Folder
  • Move to Trash
  • Forward to
  • Mark as Read
  • Move to Folder and Mark as Read
  • Move to Trash and Mark as Read
  • Forward to an Email Address and Mark as Read

None of those actions are the same as bouncing or silently discarding an email. At most, you can have the email sent to your Trash folder.

Mail.app on a Mac allows you to mark senders as “blocked”. You can configure Mail.app’s junk mail filters to either “Mark [their message] as blocked mail, but leave it in my Inbox” or “Move it to the Trash”. Again, you can’t bounce or discard it.

I tried to be clever and write an AppleScript program to delete messages from my Mac’s Trash folder. That was a dead end because AppleScript’s idea of deleting an email is moving it to Trash, even if it’s already in there. Neither does it offer a way to automatically empty the trash.

Apple, this is disappointing. If I’m blocking someone, I don’t want to hear from them at all, ever. It’s not enough to send their messages to the Trash folder. I don’t want them to be in my email account at all.