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iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

developer.apple.com

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Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#31

Post by jtbayly »

MBCook wrote: post #23
Marsymars wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bounce rate of what, exactly? Because the bounce rate of Hide My Email addresses being deliverable is going to rise over time, by design. Whenever I start getting spam at an address that's been leaked, I deactivate it. I've done the same with my oldest gmail account, but the work required there is notably higher.

If they were moved to plain old icloud.com, I could absolutely see a bunch of companies starting to filter out all icloud.com email addresses to avoid private relay. Either just because they’re jerks or from bounce issues. Keeping it on a subdomain fixes that problem, to some degree. If the user is named ffjvhtu57325cjdjvg501a2@icloud.com no one is going to think that’s a real address. It’s very obviously a private o…

Hide My Email already uses plain old @iCloud.com as the domain.

They are not changing the subdomain. There isn’t one. The announcement is they are leaving it as-is.

The email addresses for sign-in with Apple do use the @private.iCloud.com subdomain, but again, that’s not a change.

Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#32

Post by saurik »

Marsymars wrote: post #29
MBCook wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were moved to plain old icloud.com, I could absolutely see a bunch of companies starting to filter out all icloud.com email addresses to avoid private relay. Either just because they’re jerks or from bounce issues. Keeping it on a subdomain fixes that problem, to some degree. If the user is named ffjvhtu57325cjdjvg501a2@icloud.com no one is going to think that’s a real address. It’s very obviously a private o…

Right, but I'm asking "what bounce issues?" Like for my usage there are no bounce issues with the ~400 legitimate providers that I have Hide My Email addresses from. The only ones with bounce issues are the spammers who've acquired leaked addresses that I've deactivated.

If you merely deactivate your email address rather than closing your account or changing your notification settings or whatever, then the next time a legitimate service goes to send you a legitimate email that you asked for, it will bounce. In some sense this "shouldn't matter", as in a purely P2P system the only people who would notice are the sender and Apple -- and Apple knows what is going on, so should not penalize senders the way, say, Google would if they see you sending a ton of email to their domains and they all bounce -- but people tend to use services to help send email and centrally pool their reputation (such as mailchimp) and so these services themselves then watch the bounce rate of their individual customers and either charge them more or ban their access due to the bounce rate increase.

Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#34

Post by dannyw »

giwook wrote: post #33

Can someone explain the backstory behind this? I'm reading some of the comments here and I feel like I'm missing something here.

For the "hide my email" feature, Apple currently and has always used "@icloud.com". This masks you amongst all iCloud users.

They were planning to change it to a custom domain, which would allow sites to easily filter out and reject "Hide my email" users based on the email.

They have now reverted their plans to change this, meaning "hide my email" is still "@icloud.com".

Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#35

Post by dilyevsky »

hollow-moe wrote: post #11

Using icloud.com domain for legit and hidden adresses is such a typical Apple strategy of holding their own users and "others" (ie. other web services, other users etc) hostage simultaneously. But at least here it is actually a good reason that works for the user.

how is the user being held hostage? you can redirect hide my email addresses to any domain

Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#36

Post by travoc »

dilyevsky wrote: post #35
hollow-moe wrote: post #11

Using icloud.com domain for legit and hidden adresses is such a typical Apple strategy of holding their own users and "others" (ie. other web services, other users etc) hostage simultaneously. But at least here it is actually a good reason that works for the user.

how is the user being held hostage? you can redirect hide my email addresses to any domain

Marketing turds can't just block registrations from all of @icloud.com.

Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#37

Post by xp84 »

saurik wrote: post #32
Marsymars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but I'm asking "what bounce issues?" Like for my usage there are no bounce issues with the ~400 legitimate providers that I have Hide My Email addresses from. The only ones with bounce issues are the spammers who've acquired leaked addresses that I've deactivated.

If you merely deactivate your email address rather than closing your account or changing your notification settings or whatever, then the next time a legitimate service goes to send you a legitimate email that you asked for, it will bounce. In some sense this "shouldn't matter", as in a purely P2P system the only people who would notice are the sender and Apple -- and Apple knows what is going on, so should not penal…

Is Apple really stupid enough that they BOUNCE emails after you deactivate, rather than just silent discard? What's the point of bouncing unwanted emails these days? It's not like these bounces go to humans who go "Oh, gee! This address must not work. Allow me to go and figure out how to contact him!" It's just a stream of full-on spam with completely fake return addresses, and crap from email campaign software.

Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#38

Post by herpdyderp »

cush wrote: post #28
postalcoder wrote: post #8

I've noticed a chilling new trend of apple listening to the community.

Hmm it’s almost as if people are paying good money for iCloud+ or something. They aren’t google and shouldn’t be retiring their services as if they’re giving them away for free

While I applaud this specific change, Apple has been known to stick to their guns and I used to believe they were almost always in the right for doing so because it led to better outcomes. So my take is that it's chilling because Apple has so lost their way that they can't figure out these obviously stupid directions internally before making a fool of themselves to the public (and I agree with that take).

Re: iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com

#40

Post by HeavenFox »

hollow-moe wrote: post #11

Using icloud.com domain for legit and hidden adresses is such a typical Apple strategy of holding their own users and "others" (ie. other web services, other users etc) hostage simultaneously. But at least here it is actually a good reason that works for the user.

Case in point: many websites block all VPN except iCloud Private Relay. Thank you Apple!
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