My MAC friends are telling me NOT to use an icloud email address.

An iCloud e-mail address is provided for you once you have created an Apple ID

I've had an Apple ID for about 10 years. My Apple ID is with Verizon. I have no iCloud e-mail address that I am aware of.

Your iCloud e-mail address is also an alias to your Apple ID

My Apple ID is with Verizon.

and yes you can change your Apple ID

I have no desire to change my Apple ID. I am inquiring about the ability to DELETE an iCloud email address only. ( Keeping my Apple ID. )

Are you sure it's other people that are telling you this.

I don't understand.

you can't delete an iCloud address

So my friends are right! THANKS !

but what hardship is that going to be exactly.

For various reasons, people sometimes find the need to change their email address. Just like they sometimes find the need to change their phone number.

If the email account cannot be deleted, then the senders of emails to that account have no idea that the account is not being read. The emails would just fall into a, "black-hole" and continue to use up my iCloud storage.

Whereas with Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, you have the ability to delete the email address. Anyone who sends an email to that, "dead" email address will have their email bounced back to them, they would know that that email address no longer functions.

Generally speaking, I think it's usually a bad idea to do things that cannot be undone.

While logging into iCloud automatically creates an iCloud email address for you

That might be part of my confusion. Presently, the ONLY thing I do with iCloud is my Contacts. Nothing else. When I checked my available iCloud space it shows 4.99GB.

If Apple has created a iCloud email address for me, I have never seen it. I am using iTunes, iCloud for my Contacts, Mac app store, iOS app store, and the Apple on-line store. ALL communications are sent to my Verizon email account.

and never access the iCloud email address

I don't see how I could ever access this email address. I never created a prefix, and I don't have a password. (Unless the password is the same as my Apple ID password.)

I think you are confusing things a little and making more of the issue than there is.

I plead guilty to being confused. 😕

You can create an alias to your iCloud address at any time and use that instead and then rather than senders sending email to your unwanted address and just receive a no-one at home reply, you get to receive the mail they send and get to mail them back using and advising them of the address you are now using. I know which makes more sense.

I've been reading about email aliases and have not really understood their full purpose. My original plan was to set up 2 iCloud email addresses. (With NO aliases.)

Are you saying that an alias can be deleted / changed? If true, then one could actually utilize an alias for "primary purposes" knowing that it could be changed later.

It is the same as your Apple ID that you use for your iCloud, except the suffix is iCloud.com.

Let's pretend that my Apple ID is now, 123@verizon.net. You're saying that Apple created an email address for me that is 123@icloud.com ? Do you think the password for this email address is the same password I use to log into iTunes?

You can create an ID using either your regular address or an iCloud address.

I did the former. You see, I got an Apple ID a long time ago the sole purpose was to use iTunes. Back in those days, I don't think Apple even did email.

(but don't have to) create yourself an iCloud address

Well, I started with Verizon many years ago, they have stopped doing email and dumped us to AOL. AOL is still letting us use the Verizon suffix. One motivation is that my email accounts are POP. I was thinking if I switched to an iCloud address I could keep my Mac Pro and my MacBook Pro email synchronized.

You can also have up to 3 alias's at once and you can change them

So here is my thinking. As you know, the ability to change my email address is important. Why couldn't I set up an iCloud email address and do virtually nothing with it. Then, I could create a couple of aliases. These aliases I can change. I can leave the unchangeable iCloud email address alone because I would never give it out for any purpose. It would simply act as "a gateway" for the aliases. I fear I am doing this the hard way, but maybe the only way.