alt.hn

7/1/2026 at 10:19:45 AM

Apple 'Hide My Email' vulnerability reveals peoples' real email addresses

 https://easyoptouts.com/guides/apple-hide-my-email-is-leaking-email-addresses

by sashk

7/1/2026 at 6:04:06 PM

That timeline was exactly my experience with Apple here - https://www.grepular.com/Apples_Protect_Mail_Activity_Doesnt...

They don't seem to know or care what is going on with their own email systems.

by mike-cardwell

7/1/2026 at 7:28:33 PM

I’m still mildly annoyed every email I send using Mail has my IP embedded in it

by saagarjha

7/2/2026 at 2:05:26 AM

This is your email provider doing this. I use Fastmail. Fastmail does not log the IP of the sender when you use its SMTP servers.

by js2

7/1/2026 at 7:34:21 PM

Source? I don't think this is true. Doesn't seem to be the case for me. Maybe your email provider attaches your IP address?

by WA

7/1/2026 at 8:05:56 PM

It’s in the headers. Send an email to your self from Mail and open the source in the inbox. There is your IP.

by fckapple

7/1/2026 at 9:47:32 PM

I also just tried this as well, sending an email from a Migadu-based account to one at both Gmail and MXRoute using Mail.app under macOS 15.7.7. Neither included any private IP address info I could find in either headers or raw source. That would be a good leak to know about and as sibling comment said saagarjha definitely knows their stuff, so any tips to replicate would be appreciated.

by xoa

7/2/2026 at 8:52:16 AM

Received: from smtpclient.apple (ptr. [ip]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id ... for <...> (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Thu, 02 Jul 2026 ..:..:.. -0700 (PDT)

Using Mail: Version 16.0 (3864.600.51.1.1).

Sent from a Google Apps mail.

by fckapple

7/2/2026 at 10:46:14 AM

For me that IP belongs to apple, when using the iOS mail client. I presume Apple forces third party apps to use their API and then stuff like this happens. Guess that's also on google, not mitigating that issue, tho.

Have you tried a VPN? I wonder, if Apple manages to expose IP despite a VPN. They had issues with stuff like that before.

by jijijijij

7/2/2026 at 1:25:54 PM

That Received header is inserted by smtp.gmail.com (Google), not Apple.

by js2

7/1/2026 at 8:38:44 PM

Is this from iOS? I just tested from MacOS, and the only IPs were for the transit and auth servers.

I'm not actually doubting it. saagarjha knows his stuff. I just don't see it, so maybe I'm holding it wrong.

by ChrisMarshallNY

7/1/2026 at 9:22:19 PM

Same, I remember it being in the headers long ago but don't see it now. macOS Tahoe, Mail.app client, iCloud email sending to itself or to my Gmail, both set up in default ways, IPv6 disabled

by frollogaston

7/2/2026 at 1:45:26 AM

From what I see above, it looks like the trick is to send from Mail.app to an account read by a different app (maybe just Gmail?).

I would need to test with my hosting Webmail client, so maybe tomorrow.

by ChrisMarshallNY

7/2/2026 at 8:54:30 AM

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48758444.

by fckapple

7/2/2026 at 9:11:01 AM

I saw that, in my headers, but in my case, it was not an IP in any subnet of mine.

I’ll mess around, today, and see what comes up.

by ChrisMarshallNY

7/1/2026 at 10:37:43 PM

Seems like this is a Gmail thing: https://ylukem.com/blog/apple-mail-leaks-your-ip-address

by saagarjha

7/2/2026 at 3:47:00 AM

I clearly remember many years ago that this wasn’t the case with Gmail, when looking for the source IP address in a case involving harassment of a person. I could only get Gmail’s own IP address in the headers from the multiple emails I examined at that time.

Nevertheless, as js2 said in another comment, it’s your mail provider (in this case Gmail) deciding whether to include the sender’s IP address or not.

by AnonC

7/1/2026 at 10:53:12 PM

It's not a Gmail thing:

> The reason why my IP address is visible is because Apple Mail sends emails with SMTP.

Unless you use a proxy, your IP address is visible to an SMTP server, just like it's visible to an HTTP server when you use a web browser. This is not specific to Apple Mail or to Gmail.

by lapcat

7/2/2026 at 12:24:53 AM

Yeah but I think Gmail seems to actually just keep that header rather than nuking it. To be fair I don't entirely know what I would do to fix it since (like the post) this seems like there aren't many good options here.

by saagarjha

7/2/2026 at 2:10:17 AM

Gmail's SMTP servers are what's adding the received header with your IP address, not Apple Mail.

by js2

7/2/2026 at 12:58:26 AM

> I think Gmail seems to actually just keep that header rather than nuking it.

I think that's common among email providers.

by lapcat

7/1/2026 at 10:45:04 PM

Yes, was able to repro just now

by frollogaston

7/2/2026 at 10:56:01 AM

right.

by Farhad-N

7/1/2026 at 10:43:25 PM

Why? Something real, or just nonspecific vibes?

by grayhatter

7/1/2026 at 6:27:18 PM

Has anyone seen Protect Mail Activity get re-enabled after you've disabled it? I wrote about that a few days ago: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/6/6.html

by lapcat

7/2/2026 at 3:44:40 AM

Not for me. I don’t even remember when (or since how many years ago) I turned off Protect My Email and turned on both Hide IP Address and Block All Remote Content. I still have these toggles as they are, despite the fact that I use beta releases as and when they’re released (currently still on iOS 26.x).

by AnonC

7/1/2026 at 7:02:49 PM

Fetching any email content is always worse than blocking it, because the typical threshold for spam is "is this inbox monitored". If that is true, then blast it with spam. And fetching anything ever proves that the inbox is monitored.

by LoganDark

7/1/2026 at 7:30:57 PM

My impression as a Mutt user (which never downloads linked content) is that spammers don’t really care about whether an inbox is “monitored” or not.

by layer8

7/1/2026 at 7:39:01 PM

At least in Gmail, downloading content (e.g. images) is disabled by default for suspicious emails. There is no way for the sender to know if it’s monitored unless this is disabled by explicit user action.

by tyre

7/1/2026 at 10:08:44 PM

This freaked me out the first time I used Mail. It rendered a PDF about buying bitcoin on PayPal (I don't have PayPal). Looked at the same email in Gmail and Thunderbird, it's just a PDF attachment, no message, and the sender was different. No wonder people are falling for those scams, Mail makes it easy for them.

Now if only I had a better client on my phone (never buying an iPhone again)

by godelski

7/2/2026 at 2:26:33 AM

What made you prefer Mail to Gmail, given you don’t seem satisfied with Apple’s Mail app?

by bzbz

7/2/2026 at 8:52:43 AM

I prefer Thunderbird

by godelski

7/1/2026 at 10:14:32 PM

I am starting to think all these "privacy" features merely exist as excuse for getting people to hand off their mails to Apple. Clearly the all do not deliver on the intended functionality, but the proxy/relay routing happens to some extent anyway. How convenient. If you were a company promising its users all the privacy, but secretly not giving a fuck beyond collecting user traffic and meta data, wouldn't you expect the state of things to look exactly like that? I mean, how could you explain this any other way, considering the size of Apple and the relative ease of developing such features reliably? Apple is hardly breaking ground here.

by jijijijij

7/1/2026 at 8:13:39 PM

I guess the vulnerability should work as follows (I haven't tried it), you send an email with a very large attachment to a "hide my email" address, the server that receives it (private.icloud.com) forwards it to the email server registered in iCloud which, being the very large attachment, sends a response email (from the real address) with the rejected email message. It's the first thing I would try.

by alexpc201

7/1/2026 at 10:49:55 PM

Apple rewrites the From address of before forwarding so that replies go back through its SMTP servers. Those SMTP servers should rewrite the reply not to leak information.

by js2

7/1/2026 at 10:33:09 PM

Yeah it’s a good guess. I was also thinking there might be some header leaks. Or possibly if you return server busy on the first attempt or something like this, some sort of edge case the developers overlooked.

by VladVladikoff

7/1/2026 at 5:22:14 PM

Is it based on mail undeliverable errors? Or attempts to login using IMAP or SMTP with it? Or is it exposed during the SMTP protocol?

by rubatuga

7/1/2026 at 5:32:08 PM

My guess would be it has nothing to do with email itself. Maybe it's some iCloud API that accepts obfuscated emails but returns the original email in the response, or an ID which can be used to retrieve the iCloud email from another API endpoint. Could be as simple as an "add contact/friend" feature in some Apple product (like a mail client, or a file sharing service) that resolves the obfuscated email to the original iCloud account.

by Dibby053

7/1/2026 at 9:19:58 PM

In the comment section of the 404media article Joseph Cox writes when asked whether it reveals the icloud address the email is forwarded to or the apple id [0]:

> It reveals the email linked to the Apple ID.

So I assume you are right that it has nothing to do with the email itself, but prob some other service that links the obfuscated email to the appleid of the user.

[0] https://www.404media.co/apple-hide-my-email-vulnerability-re...

by freehorse

7/1/2026 at 7:07:53 PM

I think they are hinting at the ad hoc "use hidemyemail" feature within e.g. the mail client.

I don't know what I am doing, but from a quick test, the mail header is at least disclosing the internal recipient (mail@host.com) "translation address" (as mail_at_host_com_12345abc_12345abc@icloud.com) and an alias creation date. But the latter seems to be a unix timestamp related to the real address alias creation time and is identical between an hidemyemail mail and a normal one, so there may be already a possible information leak for correlation. Side note, it also seems like the sending hidemyemail server contains the unsuspicious name "junk_forwarder". Lol.

Disclosing an address as alias and particularly as throwaway alias (through the translation address and server) already seems kinda counterproductive to begin with, but I would bet you can use this information somehow to get the sender "translation address". Either by some API interaction, or by messing with the mail header scrubbing of the translation service somehow. A server named "junk_forwarder" may be a little more lenient about what to accept or not.

Edit: Can confirm the Reddit comment linked. You simply send an email to the HME address, reply from Apple mail client, and then the real mail address gets disclosed. Mind you not even hidden. It's shown as sending from the HME alias in mail, but I received the mail with the real address as sender......... Jesus fucking christ, Apple. Did you even test this a little?

by jijijijij

7/1/2026 at 7:37:39 PM

> You send an email to the HME address, reply, and then the real mail gets disclosed in the mail source.

Does the initial sender matter? Like if it’s the HME address that sends first and receives the reply? I have around 180 of these addresses.

by impish9208

7/1/2026 at 7:57:29 PM

> then the real mail gets disclosed in the mail source.

It's not just in the source, I totally overlooked the fact the real email address is shown as sender. Lol.

> Does the initial sender matter? Like if it’s the HME address that sends first and receives the reply? I have around 180 of these addresses.

Appears so. Here is exactly what I did:

1. Created the HME through mail, sending to other email service address (OMA). (This disclosed the information in my original comment.)

2. Did some reply ping pong. (No additional disclosure.)

3. Send a new email from OMA to above HME.

4. Replied from iOS mail client (UI showing usage of HME alias. Yes, I verified this multiple times not to make a fool of myself.)

5. Received at OMA, the real address is disclosed.

6. On the iOS client side, the mail shows up as sent from the real mail address, too.

Not sure if 1. for HME creation is required, you can likely skip straight to 3. for any HME address.

Funny enough, I observed 6. in the wild before, but was kinda hoping that's an artifact of forwarding a copy of the mail to the thread. I tested this some, but not this particular ping-pong. So yeah... I now gonna check where I evidently leaked my real mail address already...

by jijijijij

7/1/2026 at 10:55:43 PM

Did #1 on macOS Mail.app, but #4 on iOS Mail client like you.

#5., real address not disclosed at OMA for me.

(now that I see the reddit thread) is this potentially Yahoo/Sonic-only?

by Barbing

7/2/2026 at 10:16:47 AM

I am not using Yahoo. Idk. I tested it multiple times to make sure I am not making up drama. I would post screenshots but I can't be bothered to edit them for privacy right now.

The disclosure mail has this in source (from OMA perspective):

X-Icloud-Hme: p=HME@icloud.com; d=; f=REAL@icloud.com; r=to; e=OMA@OMA.COM; s=OMA@OMA.COM

I know little about mail, but I think it's pretty evident there is a fuck-up, because the HME and real mail address should never be found next to each other anywhere. I kinda suspect this is meant to be forwarded to the sent box like this, but got forwarded to OMA or something.

Again, I checked multiple times, the iOS mail client shows the HME in from-field. It could be, this is "just" a bug in the iOS mail client. I presume the OP found something generally wrong with HME. But only the abyss I see here makes me absolutely not trust Apple with this anymore.

Did you do 2. and to the same OMA? The thing is, initiated from from iOS client, the ping pong goes fine-ish (despite disclosing HME usage) first time, but then "reusing" the alias, exchange initiated from same OMA is the important differentiation, apparently. There must be some issue with header rewriting, threading, idk... I presume OMA structures the header differently and does not trigger HME response as Apple expects. Or Apple already got a HME translation route for the OMA, and can't make a new one, fails to reuse the old one. Some mail servers may cut some X-whatever meta data. I mean, "X-Mailer: iPhone Mail" is cringe as fuck bloat...

by jijijijij

7/1/2026 at 9:54:32 PM

6. is a sign of bad UX but not leakage to the recipient.

by dustyharddrive

7/2/2026 at 9:41:11 AM

That's what I thought, but I happens to coincide with the actual leakage, so....

What is bad UX is the fact there are two reply buttons in the iOS client. One "in" the mail and one for the thread. The mail one pretends to reply from HME alias, the thread one does not. This alone could expose you by accident, since anyone would expect to reply with HME in any case, but you get exposed either way.

by jijijijij

7/1/2026 at 5:25:01 PM

As someone who doesn't rely on this feature, I'd love to know now as well, but perhaps the etiquette in public would be to align ourselves with:

> we will not discuss or disclose the details of the exploits until they're fixed.

But if there's a public forum where the cat's already out of the bag, then game on. Perhaps this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1ukilw1/apple_hide_m...

...which makes it seem like perhaps the attack surface is limited to scenarios involving a Yahoo/Sonic address (assuming that Apple only sends X-Sonic-* headers when talking to those providers that want to see it), which might be a small percentage of users.

by hunter2_

7/1/2026 at 6:32:38 PM

I wonder if it is replies to delivery receipts that causes this problem

by nashashmi

7/1/2026 at 5:58:19 PM

It’s hard for me to assess how real this risk is. Without details, we’re just extrapolating from circumstantial vibes.

What’s described sounds like it might be spooky. It might also be a magic trick to some degree… Mr. Cox’s PoC—“I gave a fresh Hide-My-Email alias to a guy who knows who I am, and he told me the email on my Apple ID”—is consistent with the claimed behavior but not exactly watertight.

It also sounds like it might be the sort of thing that’s either “just how the email ecosystem works” or mitigable by covert means. For example, if Apple can identify exploit attempts from its privileged vantage over its infrastructure, maybe that’s the basis for its relaxed impact assessment.

I’m reminded of Amazon’s risk assessment with respect to some Quick bug recently [0]: “yeah, it’s bad, but we checked and there are literally zero people other than you who’ve ever used that feature that way.”

Or maybe it’s the kind of thing that requires a structural sort of tradeoff to conclusively fix. I could imagine the exposure mechanism having something to do with their forthcoming move to segregate aliases to their own “private.icloud.com” domain.

(A move at which Mr. Cox swipes in the 404 Media article, too, of course, but hey—“impact journalism.”)

And then, since we have only vibes to go on, there’s the judgment reflected in the researcher’s email to Apple:

> “It seems that ending new sales of Hide My Email until the problem is fixed would be an effective way to limit the number of customers at risk. Is that an option?” Murphy wrote back.

I can only hope that was a sardonic moment of frustration quoted out of context… Hide My Email is “sold” as a tiny tiny bonus feature of a much bigger iCloud+ product. But as-quoted, it’s giving a little bit of Chicken Little… I’m reminded of the time somebody demanded that a firm I’m familiar with halt all sales (and pay hush money) because of a CRITICAL SECURITY HOLE: you could access the contents of a password field by typing the password in the field, pressing F12 in the browser, and typing $(“#pw-input”).value …

If the flaw really is the sort of thing that required fundamental product changes to fully address—like this domain segregation thing—a year doesn’t seem wild at all to make that transition safely and at scale. Especially if they identified effective mitigations in the meantime.

Then again, maybe they really are negligent…

[0] https://www.theregister.com/columnists/2026/05/13/aws-patche...

by alwa

7/1/2026 at 6:24:31 PM

> > “It seems that ending new sales of Hide My Email until the problem is fixed would be an effective way to limit the number of customers at risk. Is that an option?” Murphy wrote back.

> I can only hope that was a sardonic moment of frustration quoted out of context

I didn't make my point clearly there, and I think it makes more sense in context, but it was a sincere suggestion that Apple could stop allowing new people to use Hide My Email. There are many other email aliasing services, so they wouldn't be depriving people of a unique offering. At the time, I wasn't aware that Hide My Email was only available as part of iCloud+. All I knew was that it wasn't free.

by tjames7000

7/1/2026 at 7:46:00 PM

Makes sense to me! I'd gone off the 404 Media article originally linked. The way you put it in your blog timeline (now the link of record) makes perfect sense to me:

> We hope that Apple will take steps to limit the attack surface area even before the vulnerability is fixed. Disabling creation of new Hide My Email addresses could be helpful. It also seems responsible to notify all Hide My Email users of the risk.

Thank you for your work, and your persistence against our Sphinx-like overlords!

by alwa

7/1/2026 at 3:07:08 PM

We put up a timeline of the disclosure here: https://easyoptouts.com/guides/apple-hide-my-email-is-leakin...

by tjames7000

7/2/2026 at 2:21:16 AM

Can you please clarify whether this is only an issue if I reply to an email sent to one of my HME addresses or whether you can unmask any HME address w/o needing a reply from the recipient.

Can you also clarify whether it matters what the forwarding address is? e.g. whether my HME addresses forward to an icloud.com address (e.g. js2@icloud.com) or say a personal domain associated with my Apple ID (e.g. js2@example.org).

by js2

7/1/2026 at 4:54:43 PM

Thanks! We'll make that the main URL and put the submitted link in the toptext.

by dang

7/1/2026 at 7:53:33 PM

Thanks for everything y'all do with Easy Opt Outs. I've put a number of family members and acquaintances onto it. I'm glad this service exists at an actually affordable rate

by culi

7/1/2026 at 8:28:38 PM

Can you comment on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48752294 ?

To me it seems, at least in this instance there is not even an exploit needed and the feature apparently is just broken beyond belief.

by jijijijij

7/1/2026 at 7:32:43 PM

As someone who uses this feature I never send messages from a hide my email address as I only use it for random email signups. Am I still at risk of having my email exposed??? It’s also handy for using for free trials lol.

by Jbird2k

7/1/2026 at 5:10:48 PM

That's disappointing, both that the vulnerability exists in the first place, and that Apple takes over a year to not even fix it.

by FabHK

7/1/2026 at 7:21:28 PM

They're a struggling company and can't hire top talent.

by kevin_thibedeau

7/1/2026 at 6:29:07 PM

Not as disappointing as the discover's decision to leave affected users ignorant and hence at risk.

by chrisjj

7/1/2026 at 5:31:29 PM

I think you should formally write to Apple and give notice of 30 days to contact you or you will reveal it.

Send it to the USA media and regulator too

by fsuts

7/1/2026 at 6:01:55 PM

I've been going back and forth with Apple about it for a year. We don't feel comfortable releasing the exploit details even though they're being slow. We think enough people rely on Hide My Email for personal safety that it would be irresponsible.

by tjames7000

7/2/2026 at 1:47:09 AM

Hopefully nobody in the criminal underworld has figured it out on their own.

Do you believe the mitigation would be difficult to engineer? If, say somebody else, publicly disclosed the unmasking technique how long would you guess it would take Apple to implement a verifiable fix?

by bill_mcgonigle

7/1/2026 at 6:26:51 PM

> We think enough people rely on Hide My Email for personal safety that it would be irresponsible.

I am guessing you haven't tried that excuse on the users your witholding is leaving exposed.

by chrisjj

7/1/2026 at 6:44:08 PM

We're hoping that by notifying people that there's a vulnerability, people can stop using Hide My Email if it matters to them. I don't think that disclosing the exploit method will get Apple to fix it faster at this point.

by tjames7000

7/1/2026 at 8:11:46 PM

Its the only reason I even pay the $1 a month icloud plan, so might as well cancel it if its gonna be eternally broken.

by officeplant

7/1/2026 at 7:49:23 PM

The problem there is users cannot evaluate if it matters to them whilst all information needed to do so is being witheld.

by chrisjj

7/1/2026 at 8:07:03 PM

If having your personal email exposed would be a matter of personal safety or similar, then stop using it. If you're just using it for junk mail or to get a free trial then keep using it.

by ezfe

7/1/2026 at 8:52:02 PM

Yes, but a mitigation suggestion like "keep using it, except don't do X specific sequence" (for example, send to a Yahoo address via the Reply button, or whatever the case may be) could be helpful as well, since it seems that bad actors (and/or good actors spilling the beans) will figure it out sooner than later anyway.

by hunter2_

7/1/2026 at 6:07:56 PM

Shameless plug

https://github.com/webmonch/hide-my-mail-cloudflare

by risyachka

7/1/2026 at 10:54:47 PM

The value of Hide My Email, SimpleLogin is that you can blend in with the crowd. If you use your own domain then the domain becomes the common link.

by cedws

7/1/2026 at 6:49:34 PM

Why not just use cloudflare with catch all email routing?

by sunnybeetroot

7/1/2026 at 5:38:54 PM

I think "real email" address is underselling it, since that's commonly the apple-ID, which is the gateway to some people's whole digital existence. Not to mention the fact, you tend to use hidemyemail in particular for services you don't want any identity leaked to. The "real email" may contain your legal name already.

by jijijijij

7/1/2026 at 6:50:37 PM

"This is the one thing we didn't want to happen"

by charlesfries

7/1/2026 at 9:23:43 PM

Ok, yet another reason I have a totally separate burner Gmail instead of complicating things like this.

by frollogaston

7/1/2026 at 6:23:08 PM

I use this feature often and I'm very disappointed. Depending on the exploit, I'm awaiting to join a class action lawsuit. I'm constantly humiliated by believing Big Tech's security promises and I've had enough. I suspect that this is yet another intentional backdoor. When these security systems fail, people like me experience violence.

by kittikitti

7/1/2026 at 6:24:49 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

7/1/2026 at 5:18:46 PM

[dead]

by bubbi

7/1/2026 at 8:08:30 PM

[flagged]

by maram

7/1/2026 at 8:21:55 PM

Sorry I'm not seeing how your comment is relevant to the orignal post, can you clarify?

by mvdtnz

7/1/2026 at 8:50:41 PM

The post is about a vulnerability in Apple under CEO Tim Cook, who did horrible things after Steve Jobs died — most importantly, changing the UI/UX.

by maram