What is Hide My Email and How to Use with iCloud+?

Apple recently upgraded iCloud services to iCloud+ and introduced few new features like Custom Email Domain, Hide My Email, etc. Out of all new features, Hide My Email is one of the most useful one that you need. Most of the paid iCloud customers are automatically upgraded to iCloud+. If you are on iCloud+, then make use of Hide My Email.

What is Hide My Email?

Email spam is one of the most annoying things in digital world. Websites and apps collect emails from users for sending promotional content. In most cases, they share or sell your email to marketing agencies, and you will start receiving irrelevant spam emails. Sometimes, spam emails are also dangerous asking to unlock or verify your bank account. Clicking on any links will lead to loss of data, stealing confidential information and installing unnecessary malware on your device. To avoid or manage all these email related issues, what you need is stop sharing your email with any online services. However, this is highly impossible due to the verification (double opt-in) process legally required in many countries.

Apple comes up with a solution called Hide My Email. This will create dummy email addresses based on your Apple email and hide the original email address of your account. All emails sent to dummy email addresses will be forwarded to your original email thus the senders have no clue of your original email address. You can create unlimited dummy email addresses and delete them when not needed.

Example Case for Using Dummy Email

Let us take an example of registering for a newsletter in a website that allows you to download an eBook after email verification.

• First, create a dummy email address from your iCloud+ account which will be with icloud.com.
• Register for a newsletter subscription on the website using the dummy email.
• You will get the verification link dummy email which will be then forwarded to your Apple email. Verify your email and confirm the subscription.
• Download your free eBook from the site.
• Finally, delete the dummy email so that you will never receive any promotional email from the site again. Alternatively, you can continue using the dummy address for receiving and sending emails.

You can use this Hide My Email to send emails to unknown receivers, create accounts when logging in iPhone apps and for any other purposes you do not want to use original Apple email.

How to Create Dummy Email with Hide My Email Feature?

First, make sure you have iOS 15 or iPadOS 15 or later on your device. Unfortunately, you cannot use this feature on older devices as well as from Mac. You can also use your iCloud account to login to the website and create a dummy email.

1. Create Dummy Hide My Email from iPhone Settings

• Tap on “Settings” app and then your Apple id showing on the top.
• Go to “iCloud” section and tap on “Hide My Email” option.

• Here you will see all your dummy emails and where it will be forwarding.
• The “Forward to” email is your Apple ID, you can tap on it and select other email address if you have added that in your Apple account.
• Tap on “+ Create new address” link to get a new email address.

• Tap “Continue” to proceed further with the created email address or tap on “Use different address” to get a new email id.

• Apple allows you to add a label and note so that you can easily remember when you have hundreds of dummy emails.

• You will receive a confirmation message like below and tap on “Done” to finish the process.

You can follow the same process on iPadOS and iPod touch.

2. Create Dummy Email from Safari

Sometimes, you may need to create a dummy email when viewing the website on Safari. It may be inconvenient to first go to settings and then come back to Safari. Instead of that you can directly create a dummy email when you are in Safari.

• Tap on the email field when you are viewing the site in Safari.
• Now, you will see “Hide My Email” option above the keyboard and tap on it to create a dummy email address.

• You will get a new iCloud.com email. You can either refresh to see a new address or tap “Continue” to use the generated address.

• On the next screen, Apple will automatically add the label from the website name which you can edit and add some note if needed.

• Tap on “Use” button to fill the dummy email in the email field and continue your work.
• Apple will send you an email to your Apple email address that you have created Hide My Email on the website along with the dummy address detail.

3. Create Email from iCloud Web Access

You can also create a dummy email by logging into your iCloud account. This is useful if you want to view or create an address from Windows computer.

• Login to iCloud.com and click on “Account Settings” link showing below your Apple id.

• Scroll down a bit and click on “Manage” button under “Hide My Email” section.

• Click on “Set up a new email address” and add a label like creating in iPhone.
• Remember, all your dummy emails will be available in the “Hide My Email” settings section.

Activating, Reactivating and Deleting Dummy Emails

As mentioned, you can create unlimited dummy emails with iCloud.com and use instead of your original Apple email. However, you may not need all dummy emails after certain point of time.

• Simply go to iCloud settings and tap on the email that you want to delete from “Hide My Email” section.
• Tap on “Deactivate email address” button to stop using the email.

• Confirm the pop-up by tapping on “Deactivate” option.
• Now, you will see an “Inactive addresses” section in your “Hide My Email” settings.
• Tap on it to view all deactivated dummy emails.

• Again, tap on the email you want to take an action.
• You can either reactivate the email again or completely delete the address from your account.

Points to Remember

Remember the following points when using Hide My Email service.

• Dummy emails will be created at iCloud.com. Sometimes when viewing the emails immediately after receiving, you will see the receiver as “Hide My Email” and the sender also showing from iCloud.com. You must wait few minutes to see correct email addresses in sender/receiver fields. Therefore, make sure the emails are showing correctly when responding to the messages received with dummy emails. This will help to avoid the receiver seeing his own email is showing from iCloud.com in the mail content conversation.
• You can’t add the dummy addresses in Mail app as it is not a real inbox.
• When replying to emails, receivers will see dummy iCloud.com email to which the original message was sent. They will not see your original email address though you will send email from that address.
• Apple claims they do not store any of your email content and delete them after forwarding to you from their servers. However, they read the content for applying spam filters.

Final Words

This is an extremely useful feature to hide your Apple email and use iCloud.com email instead. You can create unlimited dummy emails and delete them after completing the task. In this way, you can keep your Apple email free of spam and work with privacy. It is also worth to note that Apple offers Custom Email Domain with iCloud+ subscription. You can use this feature to create a primary iCloud email and use your custom domain for sending and receiving emails.