Apple’s Hide My Email tool isn’t hiding your email very well, security researcher finds
Apple's Hide My Email tool is supposed to protect your real email address, but its revealed all too easily a researcher claims
Apple’s Find My Email security feature – which is designed to prevent marketers, trackers, and nefarious parties from getting hold of your real email address when signing up for apps and services on iPhone, Mac and more – isn’t really doing its job properly, according to a security researcher.
According to Tyler Murphy, he has been able to reveal the real email address through the generated proxy iCloud email address used as part of the feature. That kind of undermines the feature somewhat, right?
Murphy says he reported the issue to Apple over a year ago. However, he has now decided to go public with the knowledge after seeing no progress on it being addressed. The report comes from 404 Media, which claims to have independently verified the issue, but isn’t revealing the details as the issue is still live.
Murphy, who is the co-founder of EasyOptOuts, writes: “Apple Hide My Email is leaking email addresses that are supposed to be hidden. We reported the issue and replication instructions to Apple over a year ago. We don’t know why it hasn’t been fixed, but we don’t feel comfortable waiting any longer. Hide My Email users deserve to know that it may be possible for attackers to discover their hidden email addresses.”
Murphy says Apple had initially told him of plans to look into the issue in June last year. However, the company still hadn’t dealt with it a year later, the researcher said. Apple has not yet commented on the report from 404 Media. Hopefully the publication of the report will spark Apple into life.
Chris Smith
