Apple, 1Password, and Cloudflare all move to protect email

Apple’s new Hide My Email feature, designed to protect users against phishing attacks and unwanted marketing spam, has swiftly become but one of a variety of options now available.

The river becomes a flood

For a very long time, the daily ritual of checking email accounts has been one in which many of us must first delete the majority of messages received because our addresses have been sold all over the place. Spam filters help, but in my experience plenty gets through — and you can’t easily tell who shared your address(es) in the first place.

Everyone is at it. Capturing and selling email addresses and data about people is a big business. Not only that, but most privacy and security breaches begin with phishing emails carrying suspect links and fraudulent requests for personal information.

It’s a scourge the deeper impacts of which became crystal clear during the pandemic, when phishing incidents climbed 220%, according to F5 Labs. There was even a wave of such attacks posing as official emails from Apple.

Now people in the industry are doing something about it.

Apple’s Hide My Email

Apple introduced Sign In With Apple at WWDC 2019. This let you sign up for services and accounts privately, protecting your email address. That service still exists, but has been augmented with the new Hide My Email feature.