Using Hide My Email - screen walkthrough

[walterpaisley]

Thought I would post a quick screen tour of how Hide My Email works in macOS 12.

1. When an email form field gets focus, you'll get a list of emails currently assigned to your My Contact card. If you scroll to the bottom you'll see an option for Hide My Email.

2. Selecting that gives you a modal window with some instructions, the generated email, and an option to generate a new one.

3. Click Continue and you're offered details on the generated email and an opportunity to add note.

Clicking Use closes the modal and puts focus back in the email form field. The email list from step 1 reappears with the new generated email at the top as the selected option.

Created emails are found in the Hide My Email option in the system iCloud preferences. Clicking on the Hide My Email Options button produces this wonderful brutal-looking window. Hopefully a work-in-progress!

 

[A1MB1G]

I've been using AnonAddy service for this with a custom domain. My big question regarding Hide My Email that Apple is implementing is whether we can initiate new emails using these hidden email addresses as well as respond to emails from them while preserving our privacy and real email address.

 

[alisalem]

I've been using AnonAddy service for this with a custom domain. My big question regarding Hide My Email that Apple is implementing is whether we can initiate new emails using these hidden email addresses as well as respond to emails from them while preserving our privacy and real email address.

They forward emails to your Apple ID's email address, even if it's not using an iCloud alias. So I don't see how it's possible to send emails from those hidden addresses if you're using Gmail for instance. The feature has to be baked into the email provider's UI.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thought I would post a quick screen tour of how Hide My Email works in macOS 12.

1. When an email form field gets focus, you'll get a list of emails currently assigned to your My Contact card. If you scroll to the bottom you'll see an option for Hide My Email.

View attachment 1790669

2. Selecting that gives you a modal window with some instructions, the generated email, and an option to generate a new one.

View attachment 1790671

3. Click Continue and you're offered details on the generated email and an opportunity to add note.

View attachment 1790670

Clicking Use closes the modal and puts focus back in the email form field. The email list from step 1 reappears with the new generated email at the top as the selected option.

Created emails are found in the Hide My Email option in the system iCloud preferences. Clicking on the Hide My Email Options button produces this wonderful brutal-looking window. Hopefully a work-in-progress!

View attachment 1790672

Thanks for taking the time to make the post. Much appreciated.

 

[walterpaisley]

I've been using AnonAddy service for this with a custom domain. My big question regarding Hide My Email that Apple is implementing is whether we can initiate new emails using these hidden email addresses as well as respond to emails from them while preserving our privacy and real email address.

Thanks for the AnonAddy recommendation. I’m using 33mail but it’s blocked on some systems and a secondary is a good thing to have.

 

[A1MB1G]

Thanks for the AnonAddy recommendation. I’m using 33mail but it’s blocked on some systems and a secondary is a good thing to have.

I've been really happy with AnonAddy but if Apple provides a similar service as part of iCloud, I'd be in favour of that and could give up my custom domain name altogether too.

 

[walterpaisley]

I've been really happy with AnonAddy but if Apple provides a similar service as part of iCloud, I'd be in favour of that and could give up my custom domain name altogether too.

What I’m very interested to see is how icloud’s forthcoming support for custom domains will play with Hide your Email.

 

[ArPe]

This feature I don’t know what to use it for. Won’t it be used by spammers to send penis, hair and creepto coin spam?

 

[Apple_Robert]

This feature I don’t know what to use it for. Won’t it be used by spammers to send penis, hair and creepto coin spam?

What the privacy section of the Gruber interview. Craig explains the new security features.

 

[alisalem]

This feature I don’t know what to use it for. Won’t it be used by spammers to send penis, hair and creepto coin spam?

I use it for newsletters primarily.

 

[A1MB1G]

I would use it for all shopping websites too. There's no reason they should have my real email address. In fact, aside from maybe my primary bank provider, health services and government sites, I don't use my real email address. Far too many sites getting hacked with your email addresses being released to the open public.

 

[11235813]

If I could go back in time, I would never use my real e-mail address for anything. I would use a separate e-mail for every site, just like a separate password, and put it all in a password manager.

Since it never occurred to me to do that 25 years ago when I first started using internet, now the whole internet knows my private e-mail address, which includes my whole name in it!

Thank you Apple for this feature, but too late for me...

 

[A1MB1G]

If I could go back in time, I would never use my real e-mail address for anything. I would use a separate e-mail for every site, just like a separate password, and put it all in a password manager.

Since it never occurred to me to do that 25 years ago when I first started using internet, now the whole internet knows my private e-mail address, which includes my whole name in it!

Thank you Apple for this feature, but too late for me...

It's not too late. I ended up creating a new Apple ID and then rely on a service like AnonAddy to hide my email address when setting up new accounts elsewhere or subscribing to newsletter. Yes, it was a pain to get things set back up under my new Apple ID but at least I know it's clean and no legacy issues.

 

[A1MB1G]

Question - does this new Hide My Email relay service by Apple allow us to manually create email aliases or are they all randomly generated? Also, I would love to drop Bitwarden as I just want to keep everything simplified from a password/aliases organization stand point but there's still no way to setup shared passwords/login credentials in iCloud Keychain.