Apple says it has fixed a vulnerability in its Hide My Email feature which let essentially anyone figure out a user’s real email address which was supposed to be protected by the feature, according to 404 Media. The tech giant says issue was fully resolved in a patch released on July 3.
Hide My Email was introduced with macOS Monterey. It generates unique, random email addresses that automatically forward to your personal inbox. Each address is unique to you. You can read and respond directly to emails sent to these addresses and your personal email address is kept private.
Apple says it doesn’t read or process any of the content in the email messages that pass through Hide My Email, except to perform standard spam filtering that’s required to maintain our status as a trusted email provider. All email messages are deleted from our relay servers after they’re delivered to you, usually within seconds.
However, earlier this month it was reported that 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,” Tyler Murphy, the co-founder of EasyOptOuts, which discovered and reported the issue to Apple, told 404 Media.
And on July 16 it was reported by MacRumors that a California Apple user has filed a proposed class action accusing the company of misleading customers about Hide My Email’s privacy protections.
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