Cannot receive email to @privaterelay.appleid.com
As the title says on or around August 28, 2024, I stopped receiving emails sent to xxxxxxxxxxx@privaterelay.appleid.com addresses. These addresses are created when you use your AppleID to sign in to an App or Website that supports “Sign In with AppleID”. When you do this, there is an option to “Hide my email address” and this automatically creates these “Hide My Email” addresses. They are different from going into iCloud Plus and creating one, as those are xxxxx-##-yyyyyy@icloud.com and for me at least they work fine.
The @privaterelay.appleid.com ones being broken and not forwarding to my real email address obviously is inconvenient. I can’t receive emails from these Apps/We sites that I need.
Called support last night, 2nd Tier iCloud support tried to help for an hour and decided she would transfer me to “Mac Support 2nd Tier”, but the transfer just disconnected me. Unless the Mac person just happens to understand how mail systems work, not sure why the transfer. Just wanted to get off the call I guess. :(
Evidence that tells me the messages are lost in the system of Apple mail transfer agents (MTAs):
1) if “disable” forwarding for one these, I get an SMTP550 error (User doesn’t exist) bounce email.
2) re-enable and no get the error.
3) creating a “Hide My Email” address through iCloudPlus and using that, works just fine, forwards as @privaterelay.appleid.com used to - so something specific to private relay email forwarding.
4) I changed my main AppleID account address just to see, and same issue.
I just discovered this issue last night. I have many got any “message delayed after 24-hours” bounce backs yet, but I will see if those start showing up tonight and maybe they will have more data if they show up. I don’t think they will though, I think instead whatever process or database or KVP lookup is failing in @privaterelay MTA infrastructure will get fixed and mysteriously I will get emails again.
Looking at gaps in things like the address I use for Chick-Fil-App app for breakfast nearly every Mon-Thu morning, looks like this has happened a few times in the last few times and then works for a little while before starting again. All those emails missed. :(