Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?
A software developer reports that Apple's Mail app initiates connections to iCloud servers even when the user has disabled iCloud features for Mail. The author questions why the app is querying and saving data to CloudKit without explicit user permission.
Why it matters
This raises significant privacy and transparency concerns regarding how Apple's ecosystem handles user data and background network activity.
I use iCloud only for testing the iCloud sync feature of my App Store apps . As I mentioned in my recent blog post Apple account email address disclosure via Mail app , I don’t have an iCloud email account. As you can see in my screenshots below, iCloud is disabled in System Settings for all uses of Mail.
Nonetheless, when I send an email in Mail app, from a non-iCloud account to an non-iCloud account, Mail immediately triggers an iCloud connection, as revealed by Little Snitch . In testing, I’ve reproduced this behavior repeatedly.
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