Hide My Email is fundamentally broken in two major ways:
1. Services those emails are used with cannot unilaterally send email to them. They must pre-register how they will send email to them, which breaks services with third-party relationships such as online retail with payment processors or shipping companies.
Users don't like not receiving shipping notifications, and users don't like not seeing invoices or at worst missing bills and going into debt because the payment processor can't contact them.
2. Users signing up for services struggle to re-use accounts. If the account is identified by email, as most are, figuring out the private email used when you signed up on your iPhone, when you later try to sign in on the web, basically impossible for your average user. Users end up with mulitple accounts, likely one on their real email anyway, and it's a support nightmare for both the user and the service provider.
Does this increase user privacy? Yes. Does it increase user control? Sure I guess. But it does so at the cost of basic UX and service expectations, and likely makes the overall experience and control worse for users in many cases.
So why is this change being made? My take is that it's so that it's easier for services to exclude Hide My Email sign-ups. That way the bad UX is gone, and the service provider looks like the bad guy rather than Apple.
1. Services those emails are used with cannot unilaterally send email to them. They must pre-register how they will send email to them, which breaks services with third-party relationships such as online retail with payment processors or shipping companies.
Users don't like not receiving shipping notifications, and users don't like not seeing invoices or at worst missing bills and going into debt because the payment processor can't contact them.
2. Users signing up for services struggle to re-use accounts. If the account is identified by email, as most are, figuring out the private email used when you signed up on your iPhone, when you later try to sign in on the web, basically impossible for your average user. Users end up with mulitple accounts, likely one on their real email anyway, and it's a support nightmare for both the user and the service provider.
Does this increase user privacy? Yes. Does it increase user control? Sure I guess. But it does so at the cost of basic UX and service expectations, and likely makes the overall experience and control worse for users in many cases.
So why is this change being made? My take is that it's so that it's easier for services to exclude Hide My Email sign-ups. That way the bad UX is gone, and the service provider looks like the bad guy rather than Apple.