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

developer.apple.com

81–90 of 216 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Seriously, Apple is "big tech," but they are the only one that appears to give a crap about privacy at all. And really, they put a lot of money and effort into it. We need to give kudos when they are due. Apple's Private Cloud Compute should have won some kind of Nobel Privacy Prize, which for some reason does not yet exist.

Only thing I wish they were 20 years sooner.

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

#82
post #43

it will still be on "private.icloud.com". Just as filterable...

private.icloud.com (née privaterelay.appleid.com) is the address for “Sign In With Apple”, which is an oauth-style service that sites opt into to let you use your Apple ID to sign in. Sites offering this as a signup option are already aware it gives users an option to use a private anonymized email address. The toplevel “Hide My Email” iCloud feature is a different thing, can be done independently of a SIWA flow (you…

Agree with the comment largely; though: Apple does have a policy where apps need to use SIWA if other oauth providers are present (Google) [0]. So sites do "opt in" to this, but are forced by apple to use SIWA if they're using any other provider.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sig...

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

#84
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, Apple is "big tech," but they are the only one that appears to give a crap about privacy at all. And really, they put a lot of money and effort into it. We need to give kudos when they are due. Apple's Private Cloud Compute should have won some kind of Nobel Privacy Prize, which for some reason does not yet exist.

They still don't let me install uBlock origin + noscript. Whitelisting per-domain and per-site what can run Javascript does more for my privacy than anything else, and I can do that with firefox on linux and android, but on iOS I'm not allowed to install firefox. There's obviously no real technical limitation since if you live in the EU you can sideload an alternative browser in theory (though apple has made it unrea…

They also don’t allow you to install Windows executables. They do allow you to run adblockers designed for Safari, like Wipr, and there are any number of noscript-alikes, like StopTheScript. I’m not saying that to be snarky, but to say that different platforms have different ways of doing things.

And Firefox is in the iOS App Store. I know what you meant to say, and that it’s not the same as Firefox on Android, but it’s wrong to say you’re not allowed to install Firefox.

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

#85
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t explain how the user is held “hostage” by Apple

Hostage may be a bad analogy. More like a game of chicken. Imagine you are a regular @icloud.com email user. Apple is basically saying "I dare you to block all @icloud.com email and lose all these customers"

you could say the same thing about AWS or Cloudflare hosting anybody and everybody. Spain actually started blocking a bunch of their IP blocks during football matches due to a poorly thought out legal decision.

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

#86
post #58

This is a huge selling point. Private email relays often get blocked, the only lasting solution is to put them on the same domain as, and in the same format as, a significant number of non-private email addresses. As far as I’m aware the only other provider doing this is Fastmail. Comments about lock-in aren’t wrong, but it has to be this way. You can make arbitrary email addresses at your own domain, but anybody who…

Totally agree with unique at own domain isn't actually privacy. It wouldn't take much of a paper trail to work out the details. I continue to use it everywhere for a few reasons: - if someone emails me acting all friendly like we've had some previous relationship but it's sent to linked@mydomain or github@mydomain I know they've just scraped my contact details and it's spam - similarly, if a vendor leaks or sells my…

But all 3 of those use cases, plus privacy, can be addressed with word.salad@bigdomain.com. So you may as well get the privacy bit in there.

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

#87
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, Apple is "big tech," but they are the only one that appears to give a crap about privacy at all. And really, they put a lot of money and effort into it. We need to give kudos when they are due. Apple's Private Cloud Compute should have won some kind of Nobel Privacy Prize, which for some reason does not yet exist.

They still don't let me install uBlock origin + noscript. Whitelisting per-domain and per-site what can run Javascript does more for my privacy than anything else, and I can do that with firefox on linux and android, but on iOS I'm not allowed to install firefox. There's obviously no real technical limitation since if you live in the EU you can sideload an alternative browser in theory (though apple has made it unrea…

ublock origin is supported by Safari

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you're replying to is saying "Sites I use block all VPNs besides Apple's subscription service VPN" - I'm not sure they're not blocking it just because they fervently believe in Apple's privacy commitments and engineering :) Only pointing this out because I love Apple's privacy story and don't want your reply to be misconstrued as sarcasm, and thus the reason why it enjoys a singular exemption is because it…

I’ve never been under the impression that privacy relay is anything like a true VPN. I mostly thought it stopped BS that happens on public WiFi and public sniffing. It’s meant to protect you only until you get to a major carriers infrastructure.

It is a VPN in the sense that your traffic flows privately through a third party. This is what most people refer to when they say VPN.

It is not a VPN only in the technical approach.

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

#89
post #58

This is a huge selling point. Private email relays often get blocked, the only lasting solution is to put them on the same domain as, and in the same format as, a significant number of non-private email addresses. As far as I’m aware the only other provider doing this is Fastmail. Comments about lock-in aren’t wrong, but it has to be this way. You can make arbitrary email addresses at your own domain, but anybody who…

I configured about a dozen domains to have MX records for the mailinator disposable inbox service for about a decade for free as a gift and the domains were toxic for any other email use case for years afterwards… they were so abused you couldn’t even sign up for most web services with any email associated by the time I stopped renewing them… there are still GitHub lists of disposable email addresses that list to bla…

The reason it's toxic is because the Venn diagram between disposable email addresses and email addresses used for CSAM is a circle: If you accept disposable email and allow users to upload anything, you will have CSAM.

Whereas a Fastmail masked email or iCloud relay is still in the backend tied to your real account and identity which means it provides privacy generally for you but is traceable enough that it is unappealing for predators.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree with unique at own domain isn't actually privacy. It wouldn't take much of a paper trail to work out the details. I continue to use it everywhere for a few reasons: - if someone emails me acting all friendly like we've had some previous relationship but it's sent to linked@mydomain or github@mydomain I know they've just scraped my contact details and it's spam - similarly, if a vendor leaks or sells my…

But all 3 of those use cases, plus privacy, can be addressed with word.salad@bigdomain.com. So you may as well get the privacy bit in there.

True, but it requires setting up a mailbox at bigdomain.com for every use case. With your own domain you can just setup a catchall mainbox like catchemall@yourdomain.com and don’t even need to remember any mailbox@bigdomain.com name. Just use github@ and it will be automatically be catched by your catchall.
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