Apple announced on June 15, 2026, that Sign in with Apple and iCloud+ Hide My Email aliases will now be issued on the @private.icloud.com subdomain, according to arseniyshestakov.com. This change makes it easier for services to ban these aliases without affecting regular iCloud mailboxes, potentially undermining the privacy feature Hide My Email provides.
The update was detailed in a small announcement on Apple developer news. Previously, Hide My Email aliases used the @icloud.com domain, which offered plausible deniability and made banning these addresses costly for services. Moving to @private.icloud.com means many platforms may refuse these emails, similar to how they treat free temporary mailboxes. Users still have time to generate aliases on the old domain before the change fully takes effect.
Hide My Email has been a key privacy tool for Apple users, allowing them to mask their real email addresses when signing up for services. By shifting to a new subdomain, Apple risks reducing the effectiveness of this feature as more services might block these aliases. This development could impact user privacy and the broader email alias market, where similar services face challenges from platforms aiming to limit disposable or relay addresses.
The change has not yet been fully implemented, giving iCloud+ users a window to create new aliases on the @icloud.com domain. Apple’s developer news site published the announcement on June 15, 2026, marking the start of this transition.