Apple is planning to quietly alter one of its most useful privacy tools, and the change could make it easier for companies to identify and block the feature.
According to TechCrunch, Apple will move the anonymously generated email addresses created by its Hide My Email feature to a different domain in the coming weeks. Hide My Email, available to iCloud+ subscribers, lets users sign up for websites and apps using a randomly generated address that forwards messages to their real inbox — keeping their actual email hidden from third parties.
The concern is straightforward: once the new domain becomes widely known, websites and services can simply block or flag emails from that domain, rendering the anonymity tool far less useful. The same thing has already happened with Apple's private relay email addresses from the privaterelay.appleid.com domain — many services learned to detect and reject them.
Apple has not publicly explained the reasoning behind the domain switch, and TechCrunch did not cite an official statement from the company about why the change is being made or what the new domain will be.
Hide My Email is part of Apple's broader push to position privacy as a core product value, sitting alongside features like Mail Privacy Protection and App Tracking Transparency. Any erosion of these tools matters because millions of iCloud+ subscribers rely on them to limit data collection by advertisers, reduce spam, and protect their primary email address from breaches.
If the new domain quickly becomes as recognizable as the old one, users may find their anonymous addresses rejected at sign-up pages — defeating the entire purpose of the feature.