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Apple has provided federal agents with the real identities of at least two customers who used one of the company\u2019s privacy features designed to mask their email addresses from apps and websites.<\/p>\n
\u201cHide My Email\u201d is a feature that allows paying Apple iCloud+ customers to generate anonymous email addresses that forward messages to a person\u2019s private email address. Apple says it does not read messages that are forwarded<\/a>. But the court documents show that this email privacy feature will not prevent law enforcement from discovering who owns an anonymous iCloud address.<\/p>\n According to court records seen by TechCrunch, the FBI requested records from Apple earlier this month as part of an investigation into an email allegedly threatening Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI director Kash Patel, whose relationship with Patel has been widely reported<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn response to a law enforcement request, Apple provided records indicating that [the Hide My Email address] is an anonymized email account associated with the Target Apple Account,\u201d reads the affidavit for the search warrant<\/a>, which was first reported<\/a> by 404 Media (via Court Watch<\/a>).<\/p>\n Apple provided the account holder\u2019s full name and email address, as well as records for 134 anonymized email accounts created using Hide My Email.<\/p>\n TechCrunch has seen a second search warrant<\/a>, in which Apple turned over information about another customer in response to a request from federal agents with 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 \u201crecords received from Apple\u201d in January 2026, noted that the alleged fraudster had created several anonymized email addresses through Hide My Email across multiple Apple accounts.<\/p>\n