New Lawsuit Filed Against Apple for 'Hide My Email' Privacy Vulnerability
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Apple alleging that its 'Hide My Email' privacy feature is deceptive because it contains a vulnerability that exposes users' real email addresses. The suit claims Apple was aware of the flaw since 2025 but continued to market the service as a secure privacy tool.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing legal scrutiny on tech companies regarding the efficacy of privacy-focused marketing claims versus actual security performance.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a bug in Apple's iCloud Hide My Email tool that appeared to reveal users' real email addresses to anyone who wanted to find them. On Wednesday, a lawsuit was filed in California, Alvarez v. Apple Inc ., accusing Apple of false advertising, fraud and breach of contract for selling a privacy perk that it allegedly could not deliver.
The Hide My Email feature, which lets you generate a temporary, anonymized email address with the iCloud.com domain, is often used to protect privacy when signing up for subscriptions or logging into new or unverified websites. The feature is currently available with a paid iCloud Plus subscription .
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