Hey Siri, stop suggesting spammers’ email!

Spam is bad enough. Siri suggesting that you email a spammer? Worse.

Macworld reader Worth wrote in wondering how to remove something I never noticed: emails listed in the Mail app in macOS when you start typing in a name. The first part of the list comes from your contacts, but after a moment, a lower part labeled Siri Found in Apps shows other addresses. Those other apps includes the Mail app.

As Worth noted, “I am very unhappy about this because these names came from unwanted email, and 3 of the 4 are probably spammers.” I tried several different first parts of names in Mail and had the same experience. This is possibly because I have a lot of uncleared out email in a Gmail account I rarely use, but which is synced via Mail.

There’s an easy way to prevent this—and stop Siri suggesting things in other places, too.

1. Open the Siri system preference pane.
2. Click the Siri Suggestions & Privacy button.
3. In the list that appears, you can uncheck any Apple or third-party app that appears.
4. Click Done.

IDG

Some people may find this useful, however. If you don’t add everyone you correspond with to contacts, it’s handy to be able to have their address auto-fill from the times you’ve emailed them or received email from them in the past.

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