Apple handed over to US police the real identity of two people who used ‘Hide my email’

Apple revealed to the FBI the real identity of two people in the United States who used the privacy function ‘Hide my email’ designed to prevent web pages and applications from having access to users’ personal ’email’.

Apple allows iCloud+ users to create a anonymized email address so as not to reveal the main email when they register in applications or web pages that support ‘Sign in with Apple’.

This address is created with the ‘Hide my email’ function in Settings, which generates a unique and random email address that automatically forwards messages to the inbox of the personal account that has been configured.

Although it hides the personal address of these websites and applications, it does not do so in the event that the authorities require it, as has happened in the United States, where Apple has provided the identity of two people who used ‘Hide my email’.

As reported in 404Media and TechCrunch, the FBI requested information in early March about the anonymized Apple ’email’ of two of its users. One of them, the account from which the partner of the director of this federal office was receiving threats.

Apple responded to the request by providing real name and personal email address from the iCloud account. He also turned over the records of the 134 anonymized email accounts he had created with this privacy feature, according to court documents seen by TechCrunch.

The second case is a request for information made by federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a unit dependent on ICE, within the framework of an investigation into alleged identity fraud.