Apple provided federal officials with the true identities of at least two customers who used one of the company's privacy features designed to hide email addresses from apps and websites.
“Hide My Email” is a feature that allows paying Apple iCloud+ customers to generate an anonymous email address and forward messages to their personal private email address. Apple says it doesn't read forwarded messages. However, court documents show that this email privacy feature does not prevent law enforcement from discovering who owns an anonymous iCloud address.
The FBI requested records from Apple earlier this month as part of an investigation into emails allegedly threatening Alexis Wilkins, FBI Director Kash Patel's girlfriend and a widely reported affair with Patel, according to court records reviewed by TechCrunch.
“In response to a law enforcement request, Apple provided records showing that: [the Hide My Email address] is an anonymized email account associated with the subject Apple account,” reads the search warrant affidavit, which was first reported by 404 Media (via Court Watch).
Apple provided records of 134 anonymous email accounts created using Hide My Email, as well as the account holders' full names and email addresses.
TechCrunch has seen a second search warrant in which Apple turned over information about another customer in response to a request from federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations, a division within ICE. The search warrant sought records from Apple during its investigation into an alleged identity fraud scheme. HSI agents cited “records received from Apple” in January 2026, noting that the alleged fraudster had created multiple anonymized email addresses through Hide My Email across multiple Apple accounts.
Apple touts many of its iCloud services as end-to-end encrypted. This means that no one other than the customer, including Apple, can access their data. However, not all customer information is inaccessible to law enforcement, including information the Apple Store stores about customers such as name, residence, and billing information, as well as unencrypted information such as email.
The ability of law enforcement to access this information also highlights the privacy limitations of email. Even today, the majority of email sent is unencrypted and contains the clear text information needed to route messages around the world.
That's why there's been a surge in demand for end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal to protect personal data from both surveillance and malicious hackers.
An Apple spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.