The trap that Apple created with Hide my Email

A few months ago I wrote about owning your email address and why this is more important than ever. But I realized I didn’t fully address one major player in the space: Apple. While I mentioned them a few times, I didn’t really stop to analyze where we land when it comes to owning your email with Apple services, especially when using Hide My Email.

That’s the oversight I want to fix today.

Why Apple’s Hide my Email isn’t enough

Apple’s Hide My Email feature is clever and convenient. It allows you to generate random, unique email addresses for every service you sign up for, keeping your personal email private. For most people, this feels like owning your email—at least at first glance.

But the catch is, you’re still tied to Apple’s ecosystem. You don’t truly own the addresses. They are all variations of @icloud.com. This limits your control, and if you ever leave Apple, you could lose access or continuity across your accounts.

Even worse, Hide My Email doesn’t let you use your own domain. You might think you’re maintaining privacy, but in reality, you’re trading independence for convenience. Every time you sign up for a new service, your email is still ultimately owned by Apple. For those who value true ownership and long-term control of their digital identity, this is a subtle but important trap.

A better alternative: your own domain

One way to escape this trap is to register a secondary, almost disposable domain. This allows you to create any email alias you want without giving up control. You can separate your personal identity from your online accounts while keeping everything under one roof. With a domain, you can structure your aliases in a way that makes sense for your life, work, and hobbies.

For example, I use services like Private Email and Migadu to handle my email aliases. Migadu, in particular, allows you to create as many inboxes and aliases as you need. You can even enable a “catch-all” feature, where any email sent to a non-existent alias at your domain still lands in your main inbox. This flexibility is a huge upgrade over Apple’s rigid system.

But catch-all can be risky

Enabling catch-all can be tempting because it allows you to create unique addresses on the fly. You could sign up for any service using a variation like [email protected] without pre-creating the alias. But the downside is spam. A catch-all inbox becomes a magnet for random spam emails, often generated automatically. Once spam starts hitting your inbox, it can be difficult to control or stop.

This is why I keep catch-all disabled. Instead, I manually create aliases as needed. It adds a little extra work when setting up the domain, but it keeps my inbox clean and manageable. The control over what hits my main inbox is worth the small inconvenience. Besides, I don’t create new aliases for every new account.

How I organize my own domain

I now own a secondary domain that costs me around €0.50 per month—yes, you read that right! It’s completely disconnected from my real identity, so I’m not sharing it publicly. This domain is connected to a Migadu account, where I’ve set up several dedicated aliases for different purposes:

• account@: For any online account I need to create that doesn’t fit any of the following.
• travel@: For hotels, Airbnb, travel agencies, and airline companies.
• local@: For local businesses or services that require an email.
• shop@: For Amazon and almost any e-commerce platform.

All these aliases point to a single inbox that I control and use in my email clients. I can reply from the same inbox if needed, but my real email address is never exposed. This setup gives me complete control over my digital footprint while keeping things organized. I found this to be a great balance between disposable email addresses and sharing my real email with everything and everyone.

Takeaways

There’s always a balance between convenience and control. Apple’s Hide My Email is simple, fast, and secure—but it comes at the cost of true ownership. Having your own domain is slightly more effort upfront, but it gives you independence and flexibility. You can create aliases for specific use cases, protect your privacy, and avoid being locked into a single ecosystem.

Even without catch-all enabled, this approach works well. You manually create aliases as needed, keeping spam under control while maintaining full ownership. This method might not be for everyone, but if you value control over your online identity, it’s hard to beat.

At least, that’s what my current self believes.