Apple provided federal agents with the real identities of at least two customers who used one of the company’s privacy features designed to hide their email addresses from apps and websites.
“Hide My Email” is a feature that allows Apple paying iCloud+ customers to create anonymous email addresses that forward messages to a person’s private email address. Apple says it doesn’t read forwarded messages. However, court documents show that this email privacy feature will not prevent law enforcement from finding out who owns an anonymous iCloud address.
According to court records seen by TechCrunch, the FBI requested records from Apple earlier this month as part of an investigation into an email that allegedly threatened Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, whose relationship with Patel was was widely reported.
“In response to a law enforcement request, Apple provided records showing this [the Hide My Email address] is an anonymous email account associated with the Target Apple Account,” it says search warrant affidavitwhere was reported for the first time by 404 Media (via Court Watch).
Apple provided the account owner’s full name and email address, as well as records for 134 anonymous email accounts created using Hide My Email.
TechCrunch has seen one second search warrantin which Apple turned over information about another customer in response to a request by federal agents of Homeland Security Investigations, a unit within ICE. The search warrant sought records from Apple during an investigation into an alleged identity fraud scheme. An HSI agent, citing “files obtained from Apple” in January 2026, noted that the alleged fraudster had created multiple anonymous email addresses through Hide My Email on multiple Apple accounts.
Apple advertises much of its iCloud service as end-to-end encrypted, meaning that no one but its customers can access its own data, not even Apple. However, not all customer information is beyond the reach of law enforcement, including information that Apple stores about its customers, such as their names, where they live and their billing information, as well as unencrypted information such as emails.
The ability of law enforcement to access this information also highlights the privacy limitations of email. The vast majority of email sent, even today, is not encrypted and contains plain text information needed to route messages around the world.
Hence, the demand for end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal has grown in popularity in an effort to protect personal data from both tracking and malicious hackers.
An Apple representative did not respond to a request for comment.
