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Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

arseniyshestakov.com

341–350 of 369 posts

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#341
post #296
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cancel iCloud+, all the aliases remain active. As parent said, you just can't create more of them.

And you'll still be able to receive email send to these aliases? Even on a free-tier iCloud account?

Last I checked, yes.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#342
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean it was failing with a >3 character TLD?

could be .io .co .ai

But those have been around forever. The newer ones (.shop, .wiki, etc.) are >3 and it makes more sense to me they wouldn't be handled correctly.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHOIS isn't a factor here. If an attacker knows or deduces that you're the only individual receiving mail at *@yourdomain.example [1], they can track you across different databases by just looking for your domain name. The privacy preserving aspect of hide-my-email services is the fact that they have thousands of users using the same domain name. [1]: This is trivial if you have a service's email database leak. You j…

> If an attacker knows or deduces that you're the only individual receiving mail at *@yourdomain.example [1], they can track you across different databases by just looking for your domain name. How would that attacker gain access to such databases? Let's say HN is compromised and my email here, say hn@mydomain.com, is leaked. How does that help you track me elsewhere? If I start receiving spam at hn@mydomain.com beca…

> How would that attacker gain access to such databases?

Data breaches happen all the time.

Some services also expose emails, intentionally or unintentionally. Github is one example where your email might be exposed publicly.

> How does that help you track me elsewhere? If I start receiving spam at hn@mydomain.com because of the leak, I will simply revoke the alias, and the spam will bounce.

Because, as parent said, if someone deduces that you are the only user of mydomain.com, they can just search leaked or exposed records for @mydomain.com and infer that the accounts most likely belong to the same person.

That's the difference, with hide my email millions of unrelated people share the same domain, so you can't reliably link one email to another just based on the domain.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#344
post #24

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

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…

Sometime ago I had to pay for parking to get access to a hiking trail (in US). The way to pay for parking was shady as hell. Just a random QR code sticker on the wall that said "pay here" that navigated to a payment portal that asked for your CC, address, license plate. I mentioned to my friend who was with me, "anyone could really just put any sort of QR code here and navigate you to a fake payment portal and steal your CC"

But like you said, what are you supposed to do otherwise?

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#345
post #303
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only if you turn it on, which you can't do in the UK Fortunately changing Apple account country is as easy as buying US gift card on Amazon and unlike Google they dont mess with account location. As about encryption I totally agree its pretty meh, but again it's not why I paid my $1.

It’s not based on Apple account country, and even if it were, it’s not nearly that simple to switch it.

Did you checked it? I did.

I do have Apple devices in UK that have E2EE enabled and it works just fine.

Switching account country is super straightforward: cancel subscriptiona, change address to US, top up with apple gift card from amazon us.

No US payment details needed.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#346
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

basically you have to use parkmobile in many places unless you carry literally rolls full of quarters due to the depreciation of the USD, some places dont even have machines anymore. ParkMobile is a moneygrabbing operation that municipalities use to run their parking stuff - yay saas. They got hacked and leaked everyones phone numbers, license plates, history, and more. The settlement in court was - you got I believe…

That, especially the conclusion, is hilariously bad.

It's worse I just checked

"

You are eligible for up to a $1.00 credit to be applied to ParkMobile’s service fees. The code provides a $0.25 discount on ParkMobile’s service fees and may be used up to four times for a total discount of $1.00. The code will expire on October 8, 2026. For residents of California, the code will not expire. The code will only work for accounts associated with email addresses that are in the class."

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#347
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…

I feel as though it would be a lot easier and cheaper to open up a new gmail account than to create a new Apple account, add a gift card, sign up for iCloud+, and then create private relay e-mails to use for signing up.

Is there something about gmail that makes it less suitable for the fraudulent use cases than iCloud+ private relay e-mails? I presume you're thinking of the 'create many anonymous e-mails' feature in that regard, which makes some degree of sense. I wonder if iCloud+ throttles e-mail creation.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran into this with an NVMO mobile provider. As of about six months ago, AT&T's web site would not accept email addresses without a three-character TLD. I had to get a customer service person on the phone to manually change my address.

MVNO fwiw. Mobile virtual network operator.

It gets worse. The FFA keep nagging me to renew my drone registration.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#349
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…

Sometime ago I had to pay for parking to get access to a hiking trail (in US). The way to pay for parking was shady as hell. Just a random QR code sticker on the wall that said "pay here" that navigated to a payment portal that asked for your CC, address, license plate. I mentioned to my friend who was with me, "anyone could really just put any sort of QR code here and navigate you to a fake payment portal and steal…

That's actually a common scam that happens, too. It's a constant problem in my city, and while I already have the app downloaded on my phone others do not and find themselves getting nasty bills in the mail months later.

Re: Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the States, they tow your car to a yard and hold it ransom until you fork out a $1K or so (depends on the state/municipality), with accrued daily surcharges. And, good luck finding the yard. They also only take cash or debit so that you cannot run a chargeback later on. I'd rather just pay a $300 ticket, don't tow my car.

Can you sue them for not telling you where your car is and then to recover all fees resulting from you not knowing where your car is? I suspect you could but you'd be risking a car - better try it with the clunkiest clunker you can find.

You can try, but you won't be the first and they are going to have lawyers for this exact scenario with decades of legal rulings and legislation often in their favor already. It's not usually worth the time unless you are willing to risk losing many thousands in lawyer costs if you don't win.
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