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I've noticed a chilling new trend of apple listening to the community.

nate 25d ago
Anyone have a theory why this even made it to this point? the switch was such obviously a bad idea. just corporate weirdness that no one there bothered to raise their hand and be like "uh, are we really doing this?" or was there a story here that anyone knows about?
- super256 25d ago
  Maybe hidemyemail allows easily creating many accounts on a site. And some big site didn't like it. The "Sign-up via Apple" button and creating an iCloud email yourself have a slightly higher barrier than creating a new throwaway hidemyemail email (1 API call w/o captcha/phone verification or whatever). We might find out later this year if some site starts blocking @icloud.com but keeps allowing @private.icloud.com.
  - pests 25d ago
    It does, and I know a friend of a friend who uses them for Walmart accounts to bot pokemon drops. Those and office aliases.
- jofzar 25d ago
  It's email reputation, it the always the answer with this kind of stuff. My guess is that the bounce rate got too high and bot farms were using iCloud addresses like this.
  - Marsymars 25d ago
    The bounce rate of what, exactly? Because the bounce rate of Hide My Email addresses being deliverable is going to rise over time, by design. Whenever I start getting spam at an address that's been leaked, I deactivate it. I've done the same with my oldest gmail account, but the work required there is notably higher.
    - MBCook 25d ago
      If they were moved to plain old icloud.com, I could absolutely see a bunch of companies starting to filter out all icloud.com email addresses to avoid private relay. Either just because they’re jerks or from bounce issues. Keeping it on a subdomain fixes that problem, to some degree. If the user is named ffjvhtu57325cjdjvg501a2@icloud.com no one is going to think that’s a real address. It’s very obviously a private one. So it’s not like they were “camouflaged.“ It’s a little odd they’re switching the subdomain though.
      - Marsymars 25d ago
        Right, but I'm asking "what bounce issues?" Like for my usage there are no bounce issues with the ~400 legitimate providers that I have Hide My Email addresses from. The only ones with bounce issues are the spammers who've acquired leaked addresses that I've deactivated.
        saurik 25d ago
        If you merely deactivate your email address rather than closing your account or changing your notification settings or whatever, then the next time a legitimate service goes to send you a legitimate email that you asked for, it will bounce. In some sense this "shouldn't matter", as in a purely P2P system the only people who would notice are the sender and Apple -- and Apple knows what is going on, so should not penalize senders the way, say, Google would if they see you sending a ton of email to their domains and they all bounce -- but people tend to use services to help send email and centrally pool their reputation (such as mailchimp) and so these services themselves then watch the bounce rate of their individual customers and either charge them more or ban their access due to the bounce rate increase.
        xp84 25d ago
        Is Apple really stupid enough that they BOUNCE emails after you deactivate, rather than just silent discard? What's the point of bouncing unwanted emails these days? It's not like these bounces go to humans who go "Oh, gee! This address must not work. Allow me to go and figure out how to contact him!" It's just a stream of full-on spam with completely fake return addresses, and crap from email campaign software.
- LgWoodenBadger 24d ago
  Whoever operates the smtp servers for icloud.com complained loudly enough that their job was too hard because of all the traffic, but not loudly enough for someone smart enough to hear about it, until it was announced to the public.
cush 25d ago
Hmm it’s almost as if people are paying good money for iCloud+ or something. They aren’t google and shouldn’t be retiring their services as if they’re giving them away for free
- herpdyderp 25d ago
  While I applaud this specific change, Apple has been known to stick to their guns and I used to believe they were almost always in the right for doing so because it led to better outcomes. So my take is that it's chilling because Apple has so lost their way that they can't figure out these obviously stupid directions internally before making a fool of themselves to the public (and I agree with that take).
VCFundedGenYer 25d ago
My guess is Ternus is starting to take more and more control. Tim was pretty absent and phoning it in the past few years.

nate 25d ago

Anyone have a theory why this even made it to this point? the switch was such obviously a bad idea. just corporate weirdness that no one there bothered to raise their hand and be like "uh, are we really doing this?" or was there a story here that anyone knows about?

super256 25d ago
Maybe hidemyemail allows easily creating many accounts on a site. And some big site didn't like it. The "Sign-up via Apple" button and creating an iCloud email yourself have a slightly higher barrier than creating a new throwaway hidemyemail email (1 API call w/o captcha/phone verification or whatever). We might find out later this year if some site starts blocking @icloud.com but keeps allowing @private.icloud.com.
- pests 25d ago
  It does, and I know a friend of a friend who uses them for Walmart accounts to bot pokemon drops. Those and office aliases.
jofzar 25d ago
It's email reputation, it the always the answer with this kind of stuff. My guess is that the bounce rate got too high and bot farms were using iCloud addresses like this.
- Marsymars 25d ago
  The bounce rate of what, exactly? Because the bounce rate of Hide My Email addresses being deliverable is going to rise over time, by design. Whenever I start getting spam at an address that's been leaked, I deactivate it. I've done the same with my oldest gmail account, but the work required there is notably higher.
  - MBCook 25d ago
    If they were moved to plain old icloud.com, I could absolutely see a bunch of companies starting to filter out all icloud.com email addresses to avoid private relay. Either just because they’re jerks or from bounce issues. Keeping it on a subdomain fixes that problem, to some degree. If the user is named ffjvhtu57325cjdjvg501a2@icloud.com no one is going to think that’s a real address. It’s very obviously a private one. So it’s not like they were “camouflaged.“ It’s a little odd they’re switching the subdomain though.
    - Marsymars 25d ago
      Right, but I'm asking "what bounce issues?" Like for my usage there are no bounce issues with the ~400 legitimate providers that I have Hide My Email addresses from. The only ones with bounce issues are the spammers who've acquired leaked addresses that I've deactivated.
      - saurik 25d ago
        If you merely deactivate your email address rather than closing your account or changing your notification settings or whatever, then the next time a legitimate service goes to send you a legitimate email that you asked for, it will bounce. In some sense this "shouldn't matter", as in a purely P2P system the only people who would notice are the sender and Apple -- and Apple knows what is going on, so should not penalize senders the way, say, Google would if they see you sending a ton of email to their domains and they all bounce -- but people tend to use services to help send email and centrally pool their reputation (such as mailchimp) and so these services themselves then watch the bounce rate of their individual customers and either charge them more or ban their access due to the bounce rate increase.
        xp84 25d ago
        Is Apple really stupid enough that they BOUNCE emails after you deactivate, rather than just silent discard? What's the point of bouncing unwanted emails these days? It's not like these bounces go to humans who go "Oh, gee! This address must not work. Allow me to go and figure out how to contact him!" It's just a stream of full-on spam with completely fake return addresses, and crap from email campaign software.
LgWoodenBadger 24d ago
Whoever operates the smtp servers for icloud.com complained loudly enough that their job was too hard because of all the traffic, but not loudly enough for someone smart enough to hear about it, until it was announced to the public.

cush 25d ago

Hmm it’s almost as if people are paying good money for iCloud+ or something. They aren’t google and shouldn’t be retiring their services as if they’re giving them away for free

herpdyderp 25d ago
While I applaud this specific change, Apple has been known to stick to their guns and I used to believe they were almost always in the right for doing so because it led to better outcomes. So my take is that it's chilling because Apple has so lost their way that they can't figure out these obviously stupid directions internally before making a fool of themselves to the public (and I agree with that take).

VCFundedGenYer 25d ago

My guess is Ternus is starting to take more and more control. Tim was pretty absent and phoning it in the past few years.