Comment by w10-1

15 days ago

Before, the emails were "me@icloud.com", the default for all apple users. There was no way to distinguish normal emails from generated private emails.

Now, they will be "blah@private.icloud.com", so it will be easy to ban the generated/private email that reduces the ability to associate logins across services.

Unclear why Apple would shoot themselves in this way; I hope it's not Ternus complying with anti-privacy.

Now, they will be "blah@private.icloud.com"

I've been in the ecosystem long enough to have .iCloud.com, .me, .mobileme.com, iTunes.com, and probably one or two more addresses all assigned by various Apple services over the years before they started unifying the systems.

They all work, and independently of one another.

I wonder if all the domains will be migrated, and how namespace collisions will be handled.

  • Apple stated legacy aliases will work as is:

    > Existing addresses on the legacy domains will continue to work and forward mail to users without interruption.

maybe to avoid getting their legitimate email servers banned by other servers since they host (i.e. being exploited) a growing number of spam accounts.

But it’s not? Like if they block that subdomain, they will completely block Sign in with Apple.

  • Many web sites and apps do not use Sign in with Apple. And they could block the domain for account creation with email without blocking the domain for account creation with Sign in with Apple. This would not make sense unless Apple changed what personal information Sign in with Apple provided probably. But they could.

I see – somehow the Apple UI for this gave me the mistaken impression that privaterelay.appleid.com was the domain used by the alias, but I see now that it was always just icloud.com.