Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#161

Post by JoblessWonder » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #81

x0x0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to run a hybrid mobile app + webapp company. Private emails regularly lead to awful customer service interactions because people cannot tell us the email they used to register. Fastmail at least is off the beaten path enough that people probably can understand. Apple, especially using sign in with Apple, is horrid. And not just people unable to tell us the email; they then create multiple accounts; try to sign…

It’s up to the app architect to make a way to make this work, and to stop using emails as anything other than a UUID type of token

So I guess the solution is just to begin to allow accounts to always register multiple emails? Although I guess the issue of multiple accounts is still going to exist if the users don't know the initial (private) email that they signed up with though unless there is a different unique ID that everyone will be able to remember.

I'm curious (and not trolling by asking) what a solution might be since email has been used as a unique account identifier for so long it is hard for my brain to think of another option at the moment.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#162

Post by deepfriedbits » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #158

"Useless" is a leap. The kind of site that would block private relay emails is the kind that was already getting my burner anyway. The private relay is for sites I want to hear from, but also want a failsafe in case they're hacked later.

Exactly. No reasonable business will ban emails from this subdomain.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#163

Post by dang » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #45

SXX wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but I still generated some for myself just in case and fellow hackers can do the same if they want to. iCloud+ was the best $1 / month custom domain email and email alias service with 100GB of E2EE cloud drive. Obviously it will be sad to see it enshittified for seemingly no reason.

[flagged]

Personal attacks aren't acceptable and you've been doing this repeatedly again recently (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48522089)

We've had to ask you many times to stop breaking the site guidelines. If you keep doing it, we'll end up having to ban you. I don't want to ban you, so please fix this. It shouldn't be hard to make your substantive points without being an asshole.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#164

Post by lxgr » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

snark42 wrote: post #110

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. I have hosted my domain for 17 years on google and then fastmail. The hosting is harder than private relay, although not too hard. But I have only had maybe 3 services ever reject my domain, and those were because the domain contains a number.

I've had some reject my e-mail address because it contains their company name. REI was one (ie it wouldn't allow rei@domain.com but would accept reicoop@domain.com)

I haven't had an outright rejection, but definitely a few odd moments with call center agents. "theircompanyname@myname.com" is definitely not the default expectation :)

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#165

Post by Marsymars » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

hamdingers wrote: post #84

giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

If your website will block me out because I used a privacy friendly email, I want nothing to do with your website.

[flagged]

As others have alluded to, I'm not doing this to be anonymous, I'm doing this because companies can't be trusted not to leak my email address. Every real business that knows my real identity (banks, payroll, government, retailers, etc.) gets its own alias.

When an organization invariably leaks my email and I start receiving spam to it, I generate a new one, update my email on record, deactivate the old one, and the spam stops.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#166

Post by MoonWalk » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #60

MoonWalk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COUGHredditCOUGH

I think Reddit falls under this category. > If your website will block me out because I used a privacy friendly email, I want nothing to do with your website.

Yep, toxic garbage staffed largely by same. Unfortunately, it has amassed quite a bit of potentially useful information.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#167

Post by autoexec » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

Slash65 wrote: post #134

drnick1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you not pay with cash or card anywhere? What if you don't have a "smart" phone? I would categorically refuse to park anywhere that requires running a proprietary app on my device. Fortunately, in the States at least, I have not encountered such a place yet.

In my city in Northern California our downtown uses an app for parking now. I don’t use it so it’s still an option, but you have to goto a kiosk, enter your license plate number, and pay with card. It’s made the downtown more of a ghost town (admittedly it was already dying) and the boomers with cash just don’t go. The younger 20somethings all complain “boomers are too stupid to use an app” and have no concern for pr…

> The younger 20somethings all complain “boomers are too stupid to use an app” and have no concern for privacy apparently.

They were literally trained not to value their privacy. The first generation of ipad kids now have driver's licenses.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#168

Post by qalmakka » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #65

muse900 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but not always applicable unfortunately… e.g. the other day I was in Italy, I needed to park on the publicly available parking which was paid to the municipality. No other parking available anywhere near in 30 mins walking distance. (paid or free) I had to download a 3rd party app that asked me to register. This app isn’t by the Italian government, it’s affiliated though. So in that situation, I want nothing to d…

Can you not pay with cash or card anywhere? What if you don't have a "smart" phone? I would categorically refuse to park anywhere that requires running a proprietary app on my device. Fortunately, in the States at least, I have not encountered such a place yet.

You need to find a working parking metre which may or may not work, accept cards or give back change. Also most if not all of parking apps allow you to pay by the exact minute and extended your stay dynamically from the go, while with a paper ticket you need to go back to the car and get another one before it expires

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#169

Post by al_borland » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

MoonWalk wrote: post #166

al_borland wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Reddit falls under this category. > If your website will block me out because I used a privacy friendly email, I want nothing to do with your website.

Yep, toxic garbage staffed largely by same. Unfortunately, it has amassed quite a bit of potentially useful information.

You don’t need an account to access the information. It’s also all been sucked up my the LLMs, for better or worse.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#170

Post by jonotime » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

switz wrote: post #92

jonotime wrote: post #82

Pro tip for doing something like this without apple. Buy or get a cheap domain name. Create a subdomain on it and have it catch and forward all messages to you when sent to that sub. For example: nytimes@mailsub.example.com -> jono@gmail anything-else@mailsub.example.com -> jono@gmail You dont even need to materialize aliases at all.

I do this. The awkward thing is when I am in person or on the phone and have to explain that my customer email address is [their_business_name]@my_weird_domain.tld But the people usually just nod along. The other downside is that it's forward-in only, wish I could proxy responses without setting up a whole new inbox (and outbox).

Just happened to me today! I was at the Verizon store and my address was verizon@... Sometimes it leads to confusion, but sometimes it leads to getting extra special treatment actually! They think I'm someone important.