Apple will hide your email address from apps and websites, but not from the cops

Apple has provided federal agents with the real identities of at least two customers who used one of the company’s privacy features designed to hide their email addresses from apps and websites.

Hide My Email is a feature that allows paying Apple iCloud+ customers to create anonymous email addresses that forward messages to a person’s private email address. Apple says it doesn’t Read messages that are being forwarded. But court documents show that this email privacy feature won’t prevent law enforcement from finding out who owns an anonymous iCloud address.

According to court records seen by TechCrunch, the FBI requested records from Apple earlier this month as part of an investigation into an email that allegedly threatened Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, who had an affair with Patel. It has been widely reported.

“In response to a law enforcement request, Apple provided records indicating that (Hide My Email Address) is an anonymous email account associated with the targeted Apple account,” the message read. Acknowledgment of the inspection warrantwhich was Reported for the first time By 404 Media (via Court monitoring).

Apple provided the account holder’s full name and email address, as well as records for 134 anonymous email accounts created using Hide My Email.

TechCrunch has seen a Second search warrantApple turned over information about another customer in response to a request from federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations, a unit within ICE. The search warrant requested records from Apple while investigating an alleged identity fraud scheme. An HSI agent, citing “logs from Apple” in January 2026, indicated that the alleged fraudster created multiple anonymous email addresses through Hide My Email across multiple Apple accounts.

Apple promotes Much of its iCloud services are end-to-end encryptedWhich means that no one other than its customers can access their private data, not even Apple. But not all customer information is beyond the reach of law enforcement, including information Apple stores about its customers, such as their names, where they live, and billing information, as well as unencrypted information, such as emails.

The ability of law enforcement to access this information also underscores the privacy limitations of emails; The vast majority of emails sent, even today, are not encrypted and contain plain text information required to route messages around the world.

As such, demand for end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, such as Signal, has increased in popularity in an attempt to protect private data from surveillance and malicious hackers.

An Apple spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.