Apple has provided federal agents with the real identities of at least two customers who used the company’s “Hide My Email” privacy feature. This feature allows paying iCloud+ customers to generate anonymous email addresses that forward messages to a personal email account. Apple states it does not read the forwarded messages. However, court documents reveal this feature does not prevent law enforcement from discovering who owns an anonymous iCloud address.
According to court records, the FBI recently requested records from Apple as part of an investigation into a threatening email. The email was allegedly sent to Alexis Wilkins, who has been widely reported as the girlfriend of FBI director Kash Patel. In response to the law enforcement request, Apple provided records showing the anonymous email address was linked to a specific Apple account. The company supplied the account holder’s full name and email address, along with records for 134 anonymized email accounts created using Hide My Email.
TechCrunch has also seen a second search warrant in which Apple provided information about another customer to federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations. This request was part of an investigation into an alleged identity fraud scheme. Records from Apple indicated the individual had created several anonymized email addresses through Hide My Email across multiple Apple accounts.
Apple promotes much of its iCloud service as end-to-end encrypted, meaning only customers can access their data. However, not all customer information is beyond law enforcement reach. Apple stores certain customer details like names, addresses, and billing information, as well as unencrypted data such as emails, which can be accessed with proper legal requests.
This access highlights the privacy limitations of email itself. The vast majority of emails sent today are not encrypted and contain plaintext information necessary for global routing. Consequently, demand for fully end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, like Signal, has grown significantly as users seek to protect private data from both surveillance and malicious hackers.
A spokesperson for Apple did not respond to a request for comment.