Hide my email comes in clutch

Since writing earlier this month about Hide My Email, one of my favorite features of iCloud+, I had a situation come up where it immediately solved a problem for me. I was looking for a mortgage calculator to research information on a HELOC, and a certain website comes up. Rhymes with Pocket Gorgeous.

I entered in the data I was looking for, and got a required form for my email and phone. I hesitated.

Too many companies like this abuse email collection, sell it off, and refuse to honor any request for unsubscription or opt-out marketing.

So instead of trusting this company, I used Hide My Email and iCloud auto generated a new one-off email address for me.

As expected the first email popped into my inbox, cheerful, stummed to the brim with marketing, and ready to beg me for money.

I gave them a chance and unsubscribed.

They did not honor my request, of course. A day later another email popped in, as pretentious as ever. This time I was able to take back a little control. I went into iCloud and disabled that temporary email.

It’s crazy we have to resort to tricks like this. But decades of abuse at the hands of maybe-well-intentioned-but-probably-not marketers has taught us that our emails are never safe being handed out to anyone but personal contacts.

Having the ability to generate instant one-off emails tied to specific apps and websites is a tiny move in gaining back control of the inbox. I love this feature, and appreciate that it exists to make my life a little saner.