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Comment by andrewmcwatters | Hacker News Reader

There’s a UX defect with Messages right now where if you delete some conversations in succession, randomly will a modal popup and ask you if you want to report the contact as spam.

Some Apple articles will tell you not to worry if you’ve accidentally reported someone as spam, but it actually does something. It’s not a pedestrian crosswalk button.

I found this out the hard way when my wife could no longer send or receive messages nor sign into Messages and we had to contact Apple support. I’ve accidentally reported tons of people as spam because of this stupid Messages experience, and I can only guess that I’ve reported my own wife so many times from clearing all of my Messages conversations that they disabled her Messages account.

The support tech had the gall to tell me they’d reactivate her account as a one-time exception, and I practically wanted to kill the guy over the phone.

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> The support tech had the gall to tell me they’d reactivate her account as a one-time exception, and I practically wanted to kill the guy over the phone.

This is language used in the service industry to signal that a “favor” is not policy.

“It’s over the return period, but only by a couple of days, so…”

“You’re a month out of warranty, but I believe you that this has been going on for a while before you brought it in. Well…”

It sounds, to me, like this was someone who was inexperienced (whether at the job or at the task of deescalating a situation). I think that they applied a standard qualifier because they lacked the insight to see that it wasn’t applicable. I doubt they really believed the same exception shouldn’t apply if this happens again.

They want to let you know that you are not important to them and that you should feel bad for bothering them; and you should behave well by not making the same 'mistake' again.

At least from my own retail experience, the whole "we're not supposed to, but..." means exactly what was said -- we're not supposed to, but we're willing to make an exception this time because insert reason.

It's not so much that I feel bothered, but rather I am more-so uncomfortable having to bend the rules (but that might just be me).

This mean-spirited view slanders those who have the least control over policy. Frontline support personnel have a limited palette of authorised remedies available to them, and anything beyond predetermined options often does require them to stick their neck out.

I read the "they" here as "Apple".

Apple is not a sentient entity. It does not have wants and needs.

“ I doubt they really believed the same exception shouldn’t apply if this happens again.”

Why do you bend over backwards to explain away Apple's bad behavior?

I suspect there is a policy otherwise the customer service reps wouldn't be allowed to do it.

Sort of like how you CAN travel without id, but it is in TSA's best interests to not let you know it is possible or the details.

I remember a friend - who was quite astute in saving money - would routinely get his discounts on things because there was a policy to allow expired coupons at certain stores.

They do say it's possible (https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification) as I discovered somewhat to my surprise a few years back. But they're deliberately vague and leave it as an "at our discretion" sort of thing.

What a coincidence. My wife had the same issue a few months ago. It started with her not being able to send or receive IMessages.

The worst part was that there was no notification nor warning. Some of her friends actually thought that she was mad at them for some reason as they would send her messages and she according to them would not respond at all.

From her perspective though she was responding to every message but they never got them.

After a while we figured out that something was wrong and went to an Apple store.

They told her that she had been reported as spam multiple times and her account was temporarily disabled.

We had to jump through a few hoops to get it reactivated and they told us as well that this was a one time exception.

Yeah, it's not like the messages in this post. Failures are silent and it's clearly a shadow ban. That's why it was so difficult for us to originally figure out what was wrong.

I believed it was some sort of service issue. I wish there was seriously legal recourse for this nonsense. You pay a cool $1000 or more just to have the device fail on you for no explicable reason.

Nice to know I can burn anyone's account who is in my contact list.

This. Go burn as many contacts as possible, and if a wide enough group you will see the company change its policies.

Otherwise, well we're the product most of the time. (yes even apple messages, all your friends are there!)

This makes a strong case for determining the contact details of the Apple executives, and reporting them all as spam.

They will just end up on the whitelist, if they aren't already.

As you can only report messages you receive, and you probably need to report them many times before it has an effect, you are limited to hurting people you are in frequent contact with.

So seems a little self destructive.

You can spoof sender phone number.

Apple’s reputation system seems limited to iMessages, not regular text messages.

At least I only get the option to “report as junk” for iMessages (that are sent by people not in my contacts).

Without paying money to shady services? How so?

The entire premise of the spam-reporting feature seems misguided given the prevalence of number spoofing among scammers.

This is iMessage. You have to prove you own a phone number to send iMessages from it.

I wonder if the same flow applies to text messages, since as I understand it - they're all integrated.

The thing I'm thinking of it:

1. Find the number of $AppleEmployee

2. Spoof a text message from $AppleEmployee to yourself.

3. Report that as spam.

Would 3 even work, and if so - would it have any impact on that employee's Apple account.

Don't even spoof - just text them a "hey Bob, really sorry to hear that your mother got cancer - please let me know if there's anything I can do to help the family - I'm in the area tomorrow". Chances of a "sorry, wrong number" response are fairly high. Report that as spam and it will have all the legit traffic flow on it.

I really hope their spam algorithm is able to take into consideration who messages first.

Oh ye of little^Wexcess faith.

Telegram does at least.

Such outcomes are also true of email services, which train reputation stochastically.

It recently took me a week of mitigation haggling with Outlook Deliverability Support to overturn an unexpected adverse finding in SNDS for an assigned /29.

Fortunately this hosted a low-volume MTA with few (sender,recipient) tuples to consider, and after a thorough review of our logs the root cause was uncovered, and I was moved to instruct <relative>, in no uncertain terms, to stop using Junk as their deletion mechanism.

Reading your comment it just occurred to me that "Junk" is a very poor label for the spam button. Many users are going to legitimately think that a button marked "Junk" simply means "put the message in the trash". That is what the verb means. It's no wonder so many people are getting this wrong.

That is quite astute, and yes, I will confirm that the example above was born of flawed UX and consequential misunderstanding. Also that the cherished relative in question is a perfectly reasonable, intelligent, and thoughtful human being, I might even say a notable systems thinker in their own field, but otherwise a layperson with regards to email; so the blame attaches entirely to the interface even though the remedy sits with the individual.

As a counterpoint however, I also have a story about a SVP at a high-profile boutique development shop (one of the "fast five", for those who were around two decades ago and remember the term) who habitually filed important documents in the handy wire basket on their desktop. One day, they were enraged to discover that months of work had suddenly vanished. Imagine being the staffer who accepted that particular call for deskside support.

Hotmail has blacklisted the entire network my mail server is on. I just tell Hotmail users to use a mail provider that isn't garbage if they want mail from me.

> The support tech had the gall to tell me they’d reactivate her account as a one-time exception, and I practically wanted to kill the guy over the phone.

No other positive outcome is quite as rage-inducing as a "one-time exception" for something that was the vendor's fault, not yours.

I almost switched banks after a CS rep warned me not to attempt another transfer that would get reversed (not enough money in the account). It was a glitch in their system that caused the first one.

When you delete an iMessage conversation from someone not in your contacts and (I believe) which you haven't replied to, it gives an additional prompt to ask if you want to report the unwanted conversation to Apple.

This isn't related number of speed of conversation deletions, but a specific intentional path. This does not trigger for SMS-based messages, as Apple does not control the account access for those.

For whatever reason on my iPhone (on the latest version of iOS, hasn't been fixed in 12 months even after a restore) whenever you swipe down on an iMessage in a notification, the popup always has the "report spam" box whether or not I have the contact in my phone (which is supposed to mean that they aren't spam). I've definitely accidentally pressed it before on people I know, I suppose since they still send me messages they haven't been blacklisted.

You should have been grateful he didn't want to suspend your account as sacrifice.

Wait how do I report text messages as spam?

I’ve been getting a bunch lately and the thing below it that usually says “mark this as spam” in the text view is never there

They “improved” the UI in iOS 13 and stopped showing that link. Now it only appears if some variables align when you delete the entire conversation.

>Messages

I think this needs to be explicitly written as iMessages to avoid confusion. AFAIK iMessages is rarely used outside of US and France.

Maybe stop using imessage if Apple is going to be this shitty then.

iOS has XMPP clients with notification and OMEMO (end to end encryption) support. If you don't want to run your own server dismail.de is pretty great.

Ah... design in all its glory. With consequences way down the line.

Why the downvotes?...

At this level, this is directly the consequences of either a choice (that Apple services would behave like this), either a lack of design/thinking through the whole user path.

Whichever it is, it does not sound very "Apple", but brutal and complex.

> I practically wanted to kill the guy over the phone.

I first had that experience with Apple 25 years ago when I called (from the hinterlands) to get a replacement switch for my Apple (one-button) Mouse.

Apple rep: "No we don't sell parts like that."

Mutter, mutter, something about with a $5 switch I could fix it in two minutes rather than buy a new one.

Apple rep: " Why bother? It's just a cheap peripheral ... only $80 to get a new one."

Epilogue:

Imagine my reaction when I found out that the cost of a 1.5MB "superdrive" (the original had been ruined by all the dust that had been sucked through it by the system fan) was $400. (In that time and place, that was one month's rent.)

I’m really confused.

1. There is no quick action to report as spam, so how is it even being triggered?

2. You regularly delete your conversation with your wife?

3. It seems implausible that Apple would disable someone’s iMessage account based on one person’s spam report.

Personally, I’ve never seen “report as spam” show up unexpectedly. In fact, I’m not even sure how to get it at all. AFAIK it’s only offered as an inline option when receiving a message from a new sender.

The entire reason why this is being mentioned in the first place is because it's unexpected behavior. You can't honestly expect to resolve their issue with snide remarks and anecdotal "works on my machine" rhetoric.

I’m not trying to “resolve their issue”, I’m casting doubt on the OP’s story as presented.

> There is no quick action to report as spam, so how is it even being triggered?

I, too, have gotten "do you still want to receive messages from this person" popup after removing a conversation. It exists.

> You regularly delete your conversation with your wife?

If you send a lot of photos and videos - our family chat fills up with Lego creations and music practice clips - you can wind up with individual conversations eating up gigabytes of space.

> It seems implausible that Apple would disable someone’s iMessage account based on one person’s spam report.

Perhaps more than one person has made the same mistake with OP's wife's text messages?

That's perfectly legit and if that works for you fine, but there are automatic ways to mitigate this. If you go into Settings -> Messages -> Keep Messages you can set the retention period for messages to 30 days and they'll automatically get cleaned up.

Of course there may be some histories you want to keep longer than that. Alternatively you can got into Settings -> General -> Storage _> Messages and delete just the large media files directly without affecting chat texts. None of which excuses the issues of course.

> Keep Messages you can set the retention period for messages to 30 days and they'll automatically get cleaned up.

You underestimate the number of large files kids and grandparents can send in a chat in 30 days.

> I, too, have gotten "do you still want to receive messages from this person" popup after removing a conversation. It exists.

That sounds like “do you want to block this person”, not “do you want to mark this as spam”. Blocking is separate functionality.

> If you send a lot of photos and videos - our family chat fills up with Lego creations and music practice clips - you can wind up with individual conversations eating up gigabytes of space.

General > iPhone Storage will prompt you to review and delete attachments from messages without deleting the whole conversations. You can also review and delete individual media types from the Messages subscreen. And of course you can delete attachments from the info screen of any conversation in Messages.

> Perhaps more than one person has made the same mistake with OP's wife's text messages?

Then this would be expected to be a widespread issue, not something that’s happened to one single person.

>eating up gigabytes of space.

Wow that's a ton of storage, a device that wouldn't require constantly deleting messages would be so expensive.

Oh wait, none of that is actually true. Apple just likes screwing over the people that give them money.

> Apple just likes screwing over the people that give them money.

My iMessages is currently 24.14gb. I’ve not had storage space issues in a very long time. Apple gives you settings to define retention periods. So how is Apple screwing me over again?

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