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Apple is changing how its disposable email features work, and the privacy crowd is not happy about it.
In a developer notice posted Monday, Apple confirmed that Sign in with Apple and iCloud+ Hide My Email are getting merged onto one shared domain later this summer, private.icloud.com. Right now Sign in with Apple uses privaterelay.appleid.com, while Hide My Email aliases just blend in with regular icloud.com addresses. Apple says any addresses already created on the old domains will keep working and forwarding mail like normal.
So why does this matter? When Hide My Email launched back in 2021 with iOS 15, the whole appeal was that your burner address looked just like a regular icloud.com email. Websites couldn’t block one without risking banning a bunch of real Apple users by accident, so the addresses basically flew under the radar.
That protection goes away once everything moves to private.icloud.com. Now any website that wants to stop people from making throwaway accounts can just block that one domain and catch every disposable Apple address in one shot. This may spur users to revert back to other throwaway email services such as Temp Mail or DuckDuckGo Email Protection.
Apple is telling developers with apps or sites that use Sign in with Apple to update their account systems, email validation logic and allowlists so they accept the new domain alongside the old ones. Email providers are also being told to update any filtering or routing rules that specifically reference Apple’s relay domains.
Nothing changes for regular users though, the switch just happens quietly in the background and existing addresses keep working the same as always.
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