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Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

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Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#221

Post by drnick1 »

shoo_pl wrote: post #108
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.

The problem is if someone figures it out and starts sending you spam to {random}@domain.tld. That's when you will need to sit down and start creating actual aliases for all those used email addresses and stop the catch-all forwarding:) Also, another downside is that you will loose privacy by using your own domain. And the lack of privacy makes targeted scam/phishing more likely, and targeted scam is the one we are mo…

> Also, another downside is that you will loose privacy by using your own domain.

Not really no. You can absolutely create a domain using bogus WHOIS information. No one will bat an eyelid.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#222

Post by drnick1 »

pimlottc wrote: post #148
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.

SPF/DMARC/DKIM make this all a bit more complicated now. There are plenty of MTAs out there that will refuse to send you mail if it's not all correct.

This is absolutely not difficult to get right. Run OpenDKIM and OpenDMARC on your server along with your email stack (I use Postfix and Dovecot). Use a tool such as mail-tester.com to verify compliance.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#223

Post by nate »

I guess I'll go back to mailinator. That thing has 100s of aliases by the way for some that don't use that yet. Great service. Not guaranteed private really so don't depend on it for that. (Though if you use a strong has for a hash@mailinator.com address, is it pretty secure for "email purposes"?)

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#224

Post by drnick1 »

LoganDark wrote: post #118
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.

Services like DeepSeek have an email domain whitelist rather than blacklist. So creating your own domain just guarantees a lockout

That's nonsense. I have a DeepSeek account, of the form ai+deepseek@mydomain.com.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#225

Post by FireBeyond »

hamdingers wrote: post #143
danudey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you insist on giving me a fake email, your business is probably a liability I don't want anyway It's not a fake e-mail, it's a legitimate e-mail that you can send e-mail to and the user will receive, which has to be created by a paying iCloud user and not an anonymous rando off the internet. I'd be interested to know what downsides, if any, you see for a website to accept a private e-mail address like this. Do y…

I'm curious what you think the difference is between "a paying iCloud user" and "an anonymous rando off the internet." How many Apple gift cards do you reckon get sent to fraudsters every day? Decades worth of iCloud+ surely. I'm running a business where I need to know who you are, because my platform can be used defraud other people. If you're trying to hide who you are from our very first interaction, that's a mass…

> If you're trying to hide who you are from our very first interaction, that's a massive red flag.

You conflate email with identity, just like the media companies conflated IP addresses.

It's not hiding who you are, it's hiding my real email address behind a mask that you can't choose to sell off to marketers, or spam yourself, or otherwise profit off, regardless of the nature of our relationship - I've got plenty of spam emails from companies that I closed accounts with, thus severing our relationship.

> If you can trivially create hundreds of these emails, and fill in the rest of the required info with bought/stolen/generated PII, now I have a vector for mass fraud. Requiring you to use a recognized non-anonymized provider doesn't stop you, but it sure does slow you down. (It's not this simple of course, but all security works in layers)

It's not that simple, but I guarantee it doesn't remotely slow anyone down, not at the scales we're talking. Maybe if you're talking one entity and tens or hundreds of thousands of accounts, but it's laughably naive to believe that such a person who is set up to conduct "mass fraud" can't create 100 Gmail/Outlook/iCloud email addresses a day, if not an hour, with near zero effort (it's not like they're committing "mass fraud" by hand, after all).

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#227

Post by anonymous908213 »

hamdingers wrote: post #201
iamnothere wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the cost of blocking legitimate users who don’t want to be spammed, don’t want to be correlated after a data breach, etc. I have been willing to do KYC for services (usually financial) without giving out my main email. Services that put up too many barriers to this don’t get my business. I concede that there aren’t that many users like me, compared to the general public, but I’m a legitimate user.

[flagged]

Nowhere other than on HN have I seen so many people who are actively proud of their anti-consumer (and frankly anti-human) behaviour. It's a rather revealing look into the veil behind big tech. A lot of people have this misconception that it's evil $bigcorp forcing employees to do what earns a paycheck, but no, there's no shortage of normal people like yourself bragging about anything they can do to identify and track consumers more easily while comparing them to fraudsters for not wanting to be tracked. I suppose that's the narrative you have to concoct to help yourself sleep at night.

I'm curious, though:

> choosing to participate anonymously

Why are your name, e-mail address, and phone number not on your profile? Are you using HN with the intent to commit fraud?

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#228

Post by driverdan »

shoo_pl wrote: post #108
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.

The problem is if someone figures it out and starts sending you spam to {random}@domain.tld. That's when you will need to sit down and start creating actual aliases for all those used email addresses and stop the catch-all forwarding:) Also, another downside is that you will loose privacy by using your own domain. And the lack of privacy makes targeted scam/phishing more likely, and targeted scam is the one we are mo…

> The problem is if someone figures it out and starts sending you spam to {random}@domain.tld.

It's a non-issue. I've been using a catch all domain for at least a decade. I get a small amount of spam to random made up emails but not enough to care about plus it all gets caught and filtered.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#229

Post by hollerith »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #227
hamdingers wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nowhere other than on HN have I seen so many people who are actively proud of their anti-consumer (and frankly anti-human) behaviour. It's a rather revealing look into the veil behind big tech. A lot of people have this misconception that it's evil $bigcorp forcing employees to do what earns a paycheck, but no, there's no shortage of normal people like yourself bragging about anything they can do to identify and trac…

[flagged]

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#230

Post by pseudalopex »

snowe2010 wrote: post #85
w10-1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before, the emails were "me@icloud.com", the default for all apple users. There was no way to distinguish normal emails from generated private emails. Now, they will be "blah@private.icloud.com", so it will be easy to ban the generated/private email that reduces the ability to associate logins across services. Unclear why Apple would shoot themselves in this way; I hope it's not Ternus complying with anti-privacy.

But it’s not? Like if they block that subdomain, they will completely block Sign in with Apple.

Many web sites and apps do not use Sign in with Apple. And they could block the domain for account creation with email without blocking the domain for account creation with Sign in with Apple. This would not make sense unless Apple changed what personal information Sign in with Apple provided probably. But they could.
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