Second iCloud email address?

I don’t know of any particular reason to think that.

Google’s security is absolutely top notch, in large part because it’s probably the biggest target in the world for attackers. Until 2017, Google did scan the contents of messages to inform its advertising, but that was entirely internal (that’s a privacy issue, not a security issue) and the company stopped that practice.

Apple’s security is also top notch; the supposed iCloud leaks in 2014 were the result of spearphishing attacks, not any lapse on Apple’s part.

Historically, the main problem with iCloud Mail has been Apple’s silent filtering. I don’t know if it’s still in effect; it was a big deal in 2013.

Well, maybe, kinda…

I think asking “is more secure than [Y]?” is meaningless unless one has defined a threat model. For internet email, there are a very many ways to define “secure” – and for many of those definitions, internet-wide email is decidedly not secure regardless of host.

If you’re trying to hide from the US legal system, the answer to “who’s more secure?” will be different from if you’re trying to hide from surveillance capitalist corporations. Ditto nation-state clandestine actors, teenage hackers, and so on.

–Ron

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Adam:

There is definitely annoying filtering going on at iCloud/.me/.mac.

On many days I find a dozen or more mailing list messages, including
some from TidBITS Talk, dumped into the server-side Junk folder.

There are also other mailing lists I have subscribed to from which I
never see any traffic, even looking in Junk. I know the lists are active
because I subbed with another address outside on iCloud and get mail
that way.

About once a month, I will find a slew of Tidbits emails in my junk box.

Diane

The difference is that the filtering that was happening in 2013 caused messages to not be delivered at all to a recipient, not even to a spam folder - they were silently discarded. The sender and recipient had no idea that Apple’s filtering discarded messages without delivering them.

Just create a new mail folder for that old address and create a new rule to move all messages that use that old address to the new folder.

Whenever I see this statement I have to laugh since Apple IS the CAUSE of me having 2 Apple IDs!

Back when iTunes first came out there wasn’t iCloud, Mobile Me, or Dot Mac so you could use just about anything as an Apple ID, but an email address was suggested. So I used my AOL address so I could buy music. When Dot Mac came out, I got it and was told I had to create a mac.com email address that would also be my “Apple ID”. Ever since I’ve been trying to see when Apple would figure out how to merge two database entries into one entry. Unfortunately they STILL don’t know how to do something that is basic to users of databases (maybe they need to hire a junior high school student to teach them?). So I have to maintain 2 Apple IDs: one to buy music & apps from the iTunes Store and my Dot Mac Apple ID for hardware repair and purchases. Apple also assigned me a Moble Me email address (me.com) and an iCloud email address (icloud.com) so I wonder if they are also considered to be Apple IDs?

Same for me (the sequence of Apple IDs). I now use icloud.com as my Apple ID for most things. But signing into Apple Discussions I need to use my original Apple ID that was not an email address. I also had hassles getting my iTunes and App Store purchases to follow my ID changes. Some App Store purchases still need me to sign in as mac.com.

I use my mac.com email addresses as my Apple ID for normal daily use (iCloud mail, Store, Notes, Find my…, etc.). The me.com and iCloud.com addresses are aliases that are interchangeable for Apple ID purposes.

I deliberately use a different Apple ID for my developer account. It is an email address but not an Apple email address. It reduces confusion for me as it separates developer activities from daily usage. For example, the billing information is different. It also uses 2FA, which I am not yet prepared to use for daily activities.

Basically Apple’s policy is that any updates to previous purchases have to be made from the Apple ID used for the purchase; if you try to download them or re-download a previous purchase with a different Apple ID then you are required to buy them again. This is my problem: if I want to switch my iTunes Store account over to my mac.com Apple ID, then I’m faced with a hundreds of dollars expense!

Since everything is in a database on Apple’s servers then it would not be hard to either replace the Store Apple ID with your other one (or vice versa) or to add the other ID to the store as an additional authorized ID. Like I said, any junior high school student would know how to do it. Of course, said student would have to undergo a security investigation by Apple before they’d be allowed to do the job.

Have you tried setting up Family Sharing with your second Apple ID as a family member? That would seem to be a workaround for this situation.

No, being a single person (my wife considers computers instruments of the devil), I never thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion, Adam, I’ll look into it.

Re: “Since everything is in a database on Apple’s servers then it would not be hard to either replace the Store Apple ID with your other one (or vice versa) or to add the other ID to the store as an additional authorized ID.”

The problem is not a technical one, the problem is a legal one. Allowing the consolidation of Apple IDs would essentially allow you to transfer your purchases en masse to another person, or–if you die–for your heirs to roll your purchases from your Apple ID into their own accounts. My understanding is that the contracts Apple has with the record companies specifically require that purchases be non-transferable, and any form of Apple ID consolidation is effectively a transfer that would violate these contracts.

Dave

True, but I’m not talking about merging Apple IDs of two DIFFERENT people. I’m talking about merging Apple IDs of a SINGLE person who has ALREADY made the purchase. That would NOT be a transfer to a different person. It would be no different than changing a credit card or an address for a person.

I suppose what @dave6 was getting at is that that mechanism could be abused to move music, for which you specifically have acquired rights, to another person, eg. an heir.

While I’m perfectly willing to believe that is a present legal obstacle, I see no reason why Apple couldn’t attempt to renegotiate to make such a common-sense change possible (eg. requiring you to declare that you are still the sole user of the new address). They have a lot of market power and they have negotiated in the past to make user-friendly changes possible. This problem has caused a lot of grief for too many people for too long, @sf.ross gave us an excellent example. Would be nice to see Apple negotiate for a more user-friendly procedure.

You can’t merge Google accounts either, so I’ve long wondered if there’s something more involved.

Adam, I looked at setting up Family Sharing, but as I understand the procedure at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201088 I can’t do it.

Why not? Can’t you just pretend your second Apple ID is your wife, and go from there?

Because both are already registered under my name.

I don’t see how the name should be related. I just did this—adding my second Apple ID to Family Sharing—and it worked fine. Well, except for a very weird and laggy situation where I entered the Apple ID address and password (I used the In Person approach from Settings > Adam Engst > Family Sharing > Add New Member). Nothing happened for many seconds after I tapped Next, and then I got a 2FA prompt on my Mac, and then another 2FA prompt after another set of too many seconds. And then it all just worked.