iOS 15: How to Use Hide My Email

[MacRumors]

With the introduction of iOS 15, Apple rebadged its paid iCloud plans to "iCloud+" to reflect the fact that subscribers now get access to additional privacy features like Private Relay and Hide My Email. This article explains what Hide My Email is and how to use it.

Hide My Email builds on the idea of Sign in With Apple by providing you with unique, random email addresses that forward to your personal inbox whenever you want to keep your personal email address private.

It's especially useful if you suspect that a business you're transacting with is likely to share your email address with ad agencies or other third-parties for marketing purposes. Using a random email address means you can delete the address at any time, ensuring unsolicited emails don't reach your inbox.

How to Create an Email Address Using Hide My Email

The following steps show you how to create a new dummy email address with Hide My Email, for use in Safari and Mail. Make sure your iOS device is running iOS 15 or later.

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad
2. Tap your Apple ID name at the top of the main settings menu.
3. Tap iCloud.
   
   
   Tap Hide My Email.
4. Tap Create new address.
   
   
   Tap Continue, then give your address an identifying label. You can also optionally make a note about it.
   Tap Next, then tap Done.
   

You can now use the random email address when you send emails in Mail, or when you're asked to enter your email address on a website in Safari.

How to Deactivate an Address Using Hide My Email

If you aren't currently using a random address generated by Hide My Email, you can temporarily deactivate it so that you don't receive any forwarded email from it.

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad
2. Tap your Apple ID name at the top of the main settings menu.
3. Tap iCloud.
   
   
   Tap Hide My Email.
4. Tap the email address in the list that you want to deactivate.
5. Tap Deactivate email address.
6. Tap Deactivate to confirm.
   

From now on, you won't receive emails sent to that address anymore. If you want to re-activate the address at any time, you'll find it in an "Inactive addresses" section at the bottom of your active addresses list. Tap the address in question, then tap Reactivate Address. Alternately, you can delete it by selecting Delete Address.

How to Change Your Hide My Email Forwarding Address

You can change the forwarding address for the dummy accounts that Hide My Email randomly generates. Here's how.

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap your Apple ID name at the top of the main settings menu.
3. Tap iCloud.
   
   
   Tap Hide My Email.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the address list and tap Forward to.
   Select one of your email addresses, then tap Done.
   

Paid iCloud+ plans also include another premium feature called Private Relay, which ensures that all traffic leaving your device is fully encrypted, so that no third party between the website and your device can see the website being viewed. Check out our dedicated how-to for all the details.

Article Link: iOS 15: How to Use Hide My Email

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Another useful feature.

Slow news day! Tech news drought in full effect!

 

[Jeaz]

I really love this, but however the limit of just 100 aliases does make it, well, limited and in the end not very useful. Hopefully they increase the limit after beta.

 

[vagos]

Or you can simply have a secondary email address for all the spam and registrations on websites.

 

[hagar]

I really love this, but however the limit of just 100 aliases does make it, well, limited and in the end not very useful. Hopefully they increase the limit after beta.

Why is 100 not enough? I don’t see the need to use a different one for every single website I subscribe too.

I would use them mainly for websites I don’t really trust. And even then I could still cluster.

 

[murdoc2k]

I like the private relay feature. However, I'm also curious to know how this would impact bandwidth usage. I have a very limited data plan so I'm worried this will negatively impact available usage.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Using a different alias for each account login helps identify where the problem has come from if you do start getting spam, or in case the service you have an account with gets hacked. You only have to change that one account email or alias, rather than changing lots of account that use the same one. There might be other reasons too, but this is what I like the idea of this service for.

 

[fwmireault]

I really love this, but however the limit of just 100 aliases does make it, well, limited and in the end not very useful. Hopefully they increase the limit after beta.

Yeah I understand why there’s a limit but 100 seems limited. I would place it around the 200-250 mark

 

[hagar]

I like the private relay feature. However, I'm also curious to know how this would impact bandwidth usage. I have a very limited data plan so I'm worried this will negatively impact available usage.

There will be no impact whatsoever on data usage.

I just hope they fix the Documents & Sync bug. Every month my iPhone downloads 1Gb just for that (under Mobile Data - General). No idea what it does.

 

[So@So@So]

I admit that I did not dig further into this feature, but if this "relay" means my mails are relayed through Apple's services (what I expect), I would not use it.
After the whole CSAM thing I would not give any data to Apple...

 

[jz0309]

Will this come to macOS?

 

[meady100]

Did that just say ‘iCloud’ and ‘additional privacy features’ in the same sentence?

 

[velocityg4]

Or you can simply have a secondary email address for all the spam and registrations on websites.

That’s what I do. Been using it for over ten years for every login, medical or any company requiring an email.

Funny thing is that account gets hardly any spam. While my friend and family email gets hammered. I’m guessing it’s because that’s the one likely to get uploaded to Facebook, &c. By friends and family. Whenever one of those sites ask someone to upload their contacts.

 

[now i see it]

Are people really going to willfully install iOS 15 on their iPhone?

 

[Unsupported]

Will this come to macOS?

I hope so. I hardly use Mail on my iPhone but I use Mail.app all day on my MacBook Pro...

 

[jz0309]

I hope so. I hardly use Mail on my iPhone but I use Mail.app all day on my MacBook Pro...

To me it would be a reason to use Apple mail again

 

[Jeaz]

Why is 100 not enough? I don’t see the need to use a different one for every single website I subscribe too.

I would use them mainly for websites I don’t really trust. And I’m even then I could still cluster.

I'd prefer to use unique ones for pretty much any site, as you shouldn't really trust any site to not leak your email during a hack.

If I ever do get spam or other unsolicited email to a specific address, it just goes into the bin and make a new one. And sure, you can cluster them, but the entire solution is built around creating unique random emails for each site, and you have click through quite a few settings menus to get to the ones you've already created.

I mean, I understand there's a need for some sort of limit. But 100 is just too low.

 

[Jeaz]

Will this come to macOS?

Yeah, it's already in the current macOS beta.

 

[Jeaz]

Are people really going to willfully install iOS 15 on their iPhone?

Why wouldn't they?

 

[CarpalMac]

Or you can simply have a secondary email address for all the spam and registrations on websites.

I own a domain and then use a bespoke address for each and all sites which get piped to a single master (catch-all) account. e.g. macrumors@mydomainnamehere.com. That way I can:
1) See who sold my email / has slack security, allowing my address out into the wild (Yes I mean you, ProtectYourBubble, GolfOnline, LinkedIn, Tumblr etc..)
2) Blackhole that address.

Alternatively, with Gmail, you can add a plus and then anything you like, and you will still get it.
E.g. mygmailaccountname+macrumors@gmail.com

Having a bespoke email address is good as well as if bad people get a hold of it, they can't automatically be sure they can login to your account elsewhere, should you make the mistake of reusing a password which lets face, we all have done at some point.


edit: corrected my gmail mistake.

 

[jz0309]

I own a domain and then use a bespoke address for each and all sites which get piped to a single master (catch-all) account. e.g. macrumors@mydomainnamehere.com. That way I can:
1) See who sold my email / has slack security, allowing my address out into the wild (Yes I mean you, ProtectYourBubble, GolfOnline, LinkedIn, Tumblr etc..)
2) Blackhole that address.

Alternatively, with Gmail, you can add an underscore and then anything you like, and you will still get it.
E.g. mygmailaccountname_macrumors@gmail.com

Having a bespoke email address is good as well as if bad people get a hold of it, they can't automatically be sure they can login to your account elsewhere, should you make the mistake of reusing a password which lets face, we all have done at some point.

Thanks for sharing, while I don't want my own domain, my primary email is with gmail so thanks for sharing that tidbit!

 

[Unsupported]

Yeah, it's already in the current macOS beta.

Splendid! ?

 

[diego.caraballo]

Hide My Porn also launching at fall

 

[RickDEGH]

I really love this, but however the limit of just 100 aliases does make it, well, limited and in the end not very useful. Hopefully they increase the limit after beta.

100 aliases is limited for you, and because of that not useful? C’mon! What about the 100 times and instances you use it? No utility there?

 

[velocityg4]

Hide My Porn also launching at fall

Just use an encrypted VM. Not that I'd ever look at porn. ?