Apple reverses plan to change Hide My Email domain, keeping it on iCloud.com

Apple has reneged on a planned change to its Hide My Email feature that users said would have made the privacy tool less effective. Hide My Email is a privacy feature for paying iCloud+ users that generates a unique, disposable email address to give to websites instead of a person’s real address, while still routing messages to their regular inbox. Its benefit is that the privately generated addresses can’t be distinguished from those of regular Apple users with an @icloud.com address — though the feature still lets Apple tell law enforcement who is behind a masked address.

Earlier this year, Apple said it would move users to a new @private.icloud.com domain, which users argued would make it easier for websites to identify and reject these addresses during sign-ups. The proposed change drew criticism on social media and Reddit as defeating the service’s purpose.

Apple confirmed Monday that Hide My Email addresses “will remain” on @icloud.com, reversing its earlier plan to move them to @private.icloud.com. The company gave no reason for the reversal, but Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, who first reported the about-face, said Apple employees had objected to the change all along.

Earlier this year, 404 Media reported a separate bug in Hide My Email that revealed people’s real email addresses. Apple fixed the bug more than a year after it was first made aware that emails rejected as spam would leak masked users’ real addresses.

Why it matters

The reversal shows how sensitive Apple’s privacy tools are to user backlash, and follows a separate incident this year where a Hide My Email bug leaked users’ real addresses — underscoring how implementation details, not just intent, determine whether a privacy feature actually works.