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Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

Tech privacyweb Arseniy Shestakov
Apple is moving 'Hide My Email' aliases to a single @private.icloud.com subdomain, making it trivial for websites to block users employing the feature.
What: Apple announced that all new 'Sign in with Apple' and 'Hide My Email' addresses will move to a specific @private.icloud.com subdomain, replacing the previous randomized approach.
Why it matters: This change effectively destroys the anonymity that previously came from mixing Apple aliases with general iCloud addresses, allowing services to filter out privacy-conscious users as easily as they block burner email providers.
Takeaway: If you rely on Apple's email relay for privacy, generate a batch of aliases ending in @icloud.com now before the migration to the new subdomain is fully enforced.
Decoder
  • Hide My Email: Apple service that generates unique, random email addresses that forward to a user's personal inbox, preventing third parties from tracking users across services.
Original article

Yesterday, June 15, 2026, a small and unimportant announcement appeared in Apple developer news: New domain for Sign in with Apple and iCloud+ Hide My Email.

Long story short: now both Sign in with Apple and Hide My Email aliases are going to be issued on the @private.icloud.com subdomain. This makes it much easier to ban all aliases without affecting non-relay mailboxes on iCloud mail.

This is certainly a big hit for iCloud privacy, since some plausible deniability together with Apple’s backing made banning iCloud aliases costly. But now a lot of services will just refuse to accept these emails, just like what happens with free temporary mailboxes.

Hopefully, this can reach someone at Apple so they can reconsider this decision.

If you use iCloud+ and Hide My Email, there is still time to generate more aliases on @icloud.com as the change has not yet landed and the rate limit for creating aliases is at least 30 per hour.

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