The latest update to iOS (the operating system on the iPhone), dubbed 18.2, brings more Apple Intelligence “goodness” to the platform. That is, if you’re fortunate to have an iPhone 15 Pro or new iPhone. I guess Apple Intelligence doesn’t work at all on the iPhone 15, or any of the earlier models. Because, planned obsolescence and all that.
Part of the new “goodness” to iOS is automatic Mail categorization, something Gmail has had for over a decade on all devices. Through the mystery, mystique, and magic of Apple Intelligence, the default Mail.app on iOS 18.2 now sorts your email into “Priority” and other buckets. It apparently also only shows the unread count for those messages in “Priority”; the rest of your messages are on their own. So, if Grandma has written you a message that does not meet the Apple Intelligence Fairy Dust and Moonbeams algorithmic threshold, Grandma is shoved in a box and does not get to be represented in the red bubble count.
I wasn’t a fan of this new sorting, because like all things relying on A.I., and Apple Intelligence in particular, the success rate is seemingly below the 80/20 threshold. On Monday I turned it off completely, but apparently I didn’t do all the things to the settings that aren’t in the settings menu (they’re under three new dots that appear in the upper right hand corner), and I still received a number of Priority Notifications from Apple Intelligence, which is basically Siri with an attitude, indicating that I had a number of invoices sent to my PayPal account. Said invoices totaled thousands of dollars.
There was absolutely NOTHING in these email messages that looked suspicious, because iOS’s Mail.app basically hides everything above a first grade comprehensive understanding of how the world works, so I had to jump on my Linux box to look at the headers of these emails. But first, I jumped onto PayPal directly to see if I had any outstanding invoices.
I didn’t.
A look at the headers and other underpinings of these emails revealed that the craftsmanship of the messages was fairly impressive, though there were some obvious clues that the emails were indeed spam. One of these clues indicated that they were sent to a distribution list, and my email address wasn’t showing anywhere in the “To:” field, it had to be appearing in the “BCC:” field.
I really feel like Apple Intelligence, and A.I. in general, should have figured this out. I mean, it’s Intelligence and it’s a pure Apple experience, right?
I marked the messages as spam and went on with my day. A little while later I received a Priority! Notification! on my phone indicating another invoice was sent to PayPal, with payment expected post haste.
I didn’t even bother looking at the message. I searched to see how to really turn off this Apple Intelligence foolishness around my mailboxes off and then I went one step further.
I completely deleted my PayPal account.
With the tap to pays and shake your mama ways to pay for things these days, PayPal is fairly redundant and unneccessary in my life. I don’t like my credit card number hanging out there with random people, and since I don’t really use the platform, there’s no reason for my credit card number to hang out with those people.
So, Apple Intelligence “prioritizing” my email and PayPal altogether have both left my building.
