Apple Consolidates iCloud Aliases, Unintentionally Enabling Mass Blocking

Apple is consolidating Hide My Email aliases to a dedicated @private.icloud.com domain, fundamentally weakening the feature's privacy value by making it trivial for services to identify and block all iCloud aliases with a single rule. This elimination of plausible deniability—which previously made mass blocking costly for platforms—shifts the burden of privacy protection from companies to individual users. For millions relying on iCloud+ for genuine online anonymity, this represents a significant retreat from Apple's privacy-first positioning.