Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless

Hide My Email — that thing that lets you sign up for apps without giving your real address — is getting a shakeup. Apple is changing the way the feature works, and the people who actually use it are feeling it.

The feature has always been a quiet lifesaver. You hit the button, Apple generates a random address that forwards to your real inbox, and your real email stays hidden. No more spam in your personal inbox, no more selling your address to advertisers. The cousin who runs the side business uses it for his Stripe account. The auntie who signs up for Facebook groups uses it so her real address doesn't get sold.

But Apple is moving the goalposts. The changes are coming in 2026, and they're significant enough that the feature could become mostly useless for everyday people. Not gone — just stripped down to something barely worth the effort. If you've been relying on it to keep your digital life private, esto te toca.

Why this matters for us: the privacy tools we've been quietly using are being pulled back by companies that see them as products to sell, not services to give — and the cost of keeping our data private is about to go up for la gente.