MobileMe push email, the iPhone and SpamSieve

  • OS X 10.5.4
  • SpamSieve 2.7.1 running on an iMac in “drone” configuration, checking email every 5 minutes.
  • MobileMe set up with push email through to iPhone.

On .Mac, the iPhone was set to check for mail every 15 minutes. This meant that nearly all spam was caught by the drone iMac before the iPhone checked for mail. Result: no email alerts on the iPhone which turn out to be spam.

Enter MobileMe - “Exchange for the rest of us”. As some of you are no doubt aware, push email is currently implemented on the iPhone email client by default, but not the desktop mail app. running on the drone iMac - desktop and laptop Macs continue to rely on polling the servers at intervals as set in mail general prefs. Its hardly Exchange is it ?

This means that the moment an email is sent, the iPhone goes “ping” as the email is pushed through to it. However, the drone still has to poll the server. As a result, you get incoming email alerts on the iPhone before SpamSieve has a chance to work its magic. Eventually, the drone polls the server, SpamSieve does its stuff and any spam present eliminated from the Inbox - but to late to prevent the initial incoming email alert on the iPhone.

The only solution to this I have found is to switch off the push email function for mail on the iPhone and revert to the default 15 minute check (you can leave push switched on for calendar, contacts and bookmarks).

If anyone has a more elegant solution which retains email push and the ability to eliminate spam before it arrives on the iPhone, I would be happy to try it out…

Regards,
Simon

This sounds unavoidable. If you have push enabled for mail, the iPhone will be the first to know of any new messages, even if they’re spam. So it’s probably best to leave it off if you get a lot of spam through MobileMe’s filter.

Yep…
Thanks Michael, that’s what I thought… I emailed you about this the other day, but it is only over the weekend that I have been able to test SpamSieve with MobileMe…I thought others might find my experience a useful starting point !

Kind regards,
Simon