Hide My Email clunky at best

TidBITS Talk
1

I try to use Hide My Email and Password Manager, but it’s clumsy and clunky. To generate a “Hide my Email” on the iPhone you have to:
1 Navigate to settings
2 open your “account” your name
3 tap “iCloud”
4 scroll down to “Hide my Email”
5 Tap “My EMail”
6 wait patiently (Yawn)
7 tap “+Create New address”
8 Add labels - which, BTW do not fill allow you to re-use :(
9 Copy the email (if you don’t do this step, you have created an email you can’t use.
10 Navigate back to the account where you are trying to hide your email.
11 Paste (and now go and generate a new password). I’m exhausted just typing this!

Now, regardless of the above, hiding your email is a great feature. I received an email from a random site that used a hidden email. I was able to track the site where I created this hidden email and alert them to being hacked (haha). More than likely, they sold my email. They never admitted to it; they just asked me to contact them through the review, only to find there was no way to contact them.

Back to Apple: With all the resources and brain power available to Apple, you would think they would make the above easier to use. “Hide my email.”

And if people like “Hide my email,” why don’t we create a process or an app that will enable all our customers to create unique emails for all their existing logons? Because going through the above for hundreds of sites is just an impossible task.

2

I never create a hidden email address that way. Instead, I create it when registering with an Internet domain via the Sign In Apple option. The hidden email address is offered if you are not registered on the site with your Apple ID. You select the option, and away you go.

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3

In my experience the option to use Hide My Email from the Sign in page doesn’t always appear and I have to do it the clunky way that Marti describes.

4

I agree with Alan; when it works, it’s brilliant, but when it fails to recognise an email field - it’s a slow and frustrating process because Apple has buried the option to hide my email in the iCloud app.

5

I always create a 1Password account to keep track of the weird emails. I use it and appreciate it though

6

I have just bumped into another issue with hide my email.

If you need to communicate with a site where you have used “hide my email” and you simply click on the link to send them an email. Apple mail gives you a list of email to select from as the “sender” but doesn’t give you the option to select the hidden email.

Btw I donated $50 to Tidbits if we all donate a little it will keep this site alive. $50 might sound stingy, but I’m Australian and with our exchange rate and the big mac index it has the same buying power as US$100

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