I’ve recently started receiving spam to an old alias I created for my mac(dot)com account.
Now that Apple has dropped mac(dot)com down the memory hole, I can’t find any instructions for deleting the alias.
NB I don’t want to delete the mac(dot)com account, as it is my primary Apple account and almost everything is tied to it. Just the zombie alias.
Help, please!
I don’t think you can. This discussion on Apples boards came to same conclusion I did with one of mine, use a rule in Mail to set them to be trashed automatically.
I was thinking that as a last resort I might try calling AppleCare. But my fear of the parent address getting deleted through some misunderstanding is keeping me from doing that just yet…
Setting a rule in the Mail app at iCloud.com (instead of an iPhone/Mac) might work best.
Good idea - I’ve just done this.
When I look at my list of aliases in Mail.app, I see one for each, mac.com, me.com and icloud.com. I only created the mac.com version. so if I have an alias created as alias1@mac.com, it also appears as alias1@me.com and as alias1@icloud.com.
On the web interface, I only see alias1@icloud.com.
I imagine (I’m not going to delete an alias to find out) that if I delete alias1@icloud.com, all three would be gone.
Do you have an icloud.com version of the alias you want to nuke?
I have all those versions of the main account, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Back when mac.com addresses were available, you could create aliases that redirect to the main address. It was an early form of hide my email, but you created the address yourself. So, for example, your actual address was syzygy@mac.com, but you could have other addresses like eclipse@mac.com, perihelion@mac.com, and so forth - they all go to the syzygy@mac.com mailbox. (Please don’t click on any of those, they’re just examples but someone out there might actually have one of them…)
When I log on to iCloud.com now, I see the original address (let’s say syzygy@mac.com), plus the new addresses created when Apple rolled out new and improved cloud services. So, I also see syzygy@me.com and syzygy@icloud.com. But I don’t see eclipse or perihelion, etc. It’s these user-created aliases I want to nuke.
I have the feeling many of the posts are right, I also have an @mac.com which is more or less the parent (maybe not technically correct term) of address @ me and @ icloud, not an alias itself.
I only use the @ me addresses, something like four or five variants. I recently set up in Thunderbird on a Linux laptop only the @ mac address and anything coming to any of the variants displays on there too.
Personally I wouldn’t mess with the @ mac address but deal with the problem of spam to it. As others have noted above, and before that also with a bit of investigation of the senders to the @ mac, to get an idea if your credentials somewhere have been compromised, and to act on that as well, ie updating passwords etc where the suspicion points. There may also be legitimate trustworthy web sites that list emails that have been compromised.
I’m pretty sure that in your examples, “eclipse” and “perihelion” are only email aliases, while syzygy@me.com, syzygy@icloud.com, and syzygy@mac.com are Apple Account aliases.
Instructions to “Turn off, turn on, or delete an alias” for email aliases are at Apple Support:
From the earlier comments, I don’t believe tou can’t disable the Apple Account aliases.
Therein lies the problem – The settings don’t show old mac.com email aliases. I can’t delete what I can’t see.
Got it. Thanks - I wanted to be sure the distinction between Apple Accounts and email accounts was clear. There was one possible solution on the Apple Support thread that @tommy shared, and it was by Brent NYC, the person who had the original issue with not seeing email aliases:
I finally figured this out. I needed to use my mobileme login credentials at icloud.com in order to view my old aliases. Seems like there’s still a lack of integration between mobileme and icloud accounts.
In other words, try signing into your iCloud account with the older variants of your Apple Account, such as syzygy@mac.com and syzygy@me.com.
If the Apple Support thread is correct, if you created the email aliases while originally signed into the “mac.com” version of your Apple Account, they’ll only show up if you do login to the mac.com version of your Apple Account/Apple ID, but not if you sign in using the “icloud.com” version or “me.com” version. Conversely, if you created those aliases while using the me.com version of your Apple Account/Apple ID, you’ll need to sign into iCloud using the sysygy@me.com version of your ID.
Pretty interesting.
I’ve only ever used the @mac.com version, never the @me or @icloud versions. But just to make sure, I tried to log in using all three variants. Each time it took me to the same account, as expected; each time the old alias I’m hoping to delete was not visible.
The Apple Support thread you are referencing is really old - 2013. I think things have changed in the meantime.
It may be old, but I never want to underestimate the ancient cruft that exists in iCloud code. Anyway, sorry to hear that it didn’t work out.
I bought my first Mac in about 2001 - OS.X. I have continued with my mac.com address ever since. I initially created two aliases.
My issue is different from yours. I wanted to keep my aliases. I use them on several subscriptions Later Apple added me.com and iCloud.com and included both aliases. I did not ask for me.com or iCloud.com and recently decided I don’t want ANY me.com or iCloud.com addresses I deleted the new addresses. An unintended consequence, I lost my two aliases on mac.com.
I contacted AppleCare and after several calls and emails they restored my two mac.com aliases. I needed them for several subscriptions.
In your case, I would think Apple could delete the mac.com alias you no longer want.
