NFL removing accounts uses Private Relay

[jbpiv3]

I extensively use the Hide My Email as well as Sign in with Apple when ever I can to hopefully cut down on Spam and protect my privacy.

I just received an email from the NFL that I will need to update my account as they are no longer supporting Sign in with Apple, but also if you use an email ending with “private relay” their system will automatically reject it and you are required to provide an actual email.

What gives? Is this the direction more companies will be going?


Link to the NFL page provided in the email: https://support.nfl.com/hc/en-us/articles/12017088910236-How-to-remove-social-login-from-NFL-com

 

[fwmireault]

If you generate an email through your iCloud+ settings, the email will end with @icloud.com. Although it's weird they want to reject any email with privaterelay in it, this is a good workaround

 

[Böhme417]

Not email related, but I have found a handful of websites that will not work if using the iCloud private relay. You have to disable it to get them to work. I find this odd, because these sites are accessible using a regular VPN.

 

[zakarhino]

What gives? Is this the direction more companies will be going?

Yes. This is the unfortunate consequence of proliferating ad blocking and privacy preserving technology. If you give everyone an easy way to counteract invasive data collection then the companies are forced to do something about it. The invasive technologies become even more invasive and the counteracting measures become even more complex and less convenient. If only a small number of people use it they are less likely to heavily invest in methods to counteract it.

Apple's private email relay system is so easy to use that a lot of people are probably using it. I would consider moving to a different email relay platform like SimpleLogin (by ProtonMail) which not only has a lot more built in email domains than Apple (which in turn are less likely to be as popular as Apple's private email domain) but you can add your own domain too. You don't have to be using ProtonMail to use it BTW.

It just is what it is unfortunately.

 

[blotchy-veil]

There are several misunderstandings here. First, some background and terminology to help explain.

iCloud Private Relay - This is a technology to hide your IP address from websites while also not leaking your browsing history to the proxy. This has nothing to do with OP’s post.

Sign in with Apple - This is Apple’s “social” login implementation, which is based on OAuth/OIDC.

Sign in with Apple's private email relay - This is an optional email relay to hide your real email address when using Sign in with Apple. All these relay email addresses end with @privaterelay.appleid.com. There are various restrictions on these email addresses, such as each relay email only accepts emails from the developer’s domain that it was created for.

iCloud+ Hide My Email - Create receive-only or very limited send alias email addresses on @icloud.com domain.

The NFL app is removing all social logins, including Google, Facebook, and Apple logins. The private email relay service only works with Sign in with Apple. Most likely, by removing Sign in with Apple, they can no longer send emails to the private email relay service. This has nothing to do with iCloud+ Hide My Email or iCloud Private Relay. You should still be able to use an iCloud+ Hide My Email address (these use the @icloud.com domain, and are almost never blocked since they look like real iCloud email addresses). Although they're easy to detect by a human, I'm not aware of any automated system for deciding if it's a real iCloud mail address or Hide My Email address.

iCloud+ costs $1/month at the low end, if you don't have it. By far the cheapest email alias service, plus it includes a iCloud Private Relay, which is better than a VPN for hiding IP address. IMO the best value service Apple offers, although it does contribute to ecosystem lock-in, you can forward to any email attached to your Apple ID.