Terminating my iCloud email account

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Level 1

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Terminating my iCloud email account

I have used a @me.com email account as my primary email account for years. Recently, the amount of spam I'm receiving has become intolerable. That, and I'm not a big fan of the collusion between the major cloud service providers in the US and our government. I'm a web developer and own several domains/sites (hosted on German servers where the internet privacy laws are more protective), so... I can create self-hosted email accounts to use, and I'm going to do that.

My questions are:

Is there a way to terminate my @me.com account so that when someone sends to it, the messages bounce? I'm sure I won't be able to notify everyone and I don't want someone to send a message to this defunct address and think I received it.
Because this @me.com address is also my Apple ID, will terminating this email account interfere with using all of the other services iCloud provides (syncing between devices, my Apple TV logins, etc...)?
If I can terminate this email account without it interfering with my Apple ID, how do I do this? Removing the account from my Mail program on all my various devices will just disconnect me from said account. The account would still remain live, correct?

Thanks in advance,

Bill

Posted on Jul 10, 2014 3:22 PM

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Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Jul 10, 2014 3:26 PM in response to Karaya One

Use the Vacation Responder in iCloud to inform anyone who emails that address of anything you want them to see, optionally you can forward their emails to another address. Then sign out of iCloud on your Mac.

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Answer 2

Karaya One Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 10, 2014 3:30 PM in response to Csound1

From your answer it sounds like "No, that email account will live on indefinitely"? If so, the vacation responder is a good hack. By "sign out of iCloud" do you mean remove/delete the iCould email address in Mail, not actually "sign out of iCloud" which would break any syncing I have between the desktop, laptop, iPad, etc...?

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Answer 3

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Jul 10, 2014 4:19 PM in response to Karaya One

In System Preferences>iCloud switch off the services you don't require.

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Answer 4

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Jul 11, 2014 5:08 AM in response to Karaya One

You cannot get rid of your me.com address without also getting rid of your Apple ID, and your Apple ID is tied to all your App Store and iTunes purchases and your iCloud data.

Also, note that Apple is not "in collusion" with the government. They are not giving your data to anyone without a legal warrant. They are one of the only companies out there to release a transparency report containing a "warrant canary," so that users can be warned if the government ever forces Apple to hand over data under a gag order:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/apples-first-transparency-report-gets-warr ant-canaries-right

Apple has shown every indication that they are protecting their users' privacy.

Finally, regarding the spam, that's simply a part of life these days. You'll never get away from it entirely. Manage it by using the spam filter in Mail... or if that one isn't adequate, try a third-party spam filter, like SpamSieve.

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