Thanks for getting back - your comment is reassuring. Could be wrong but I think creating an Apple ID first before you could create an iCloud mail address came fairly late on. Those who had one of the earlier @me.com addresses got swapped to iCloud and then finished up by accident or design with one address for both purposes.
I think my problem arose from back with the earlier email addresses which I kept it over the years and didn’t think it through (or it wasn’t clear) when I signed up for an iCloud account. I then finished up with one address for both. TBH I don’t use it as my main email address since I registered my own domain (I use a hosting provider) over which I have more control. Nonetheless I do use it occasionally and it looks as though someone has got hold of it and used it for possibly malevolent purposes. The security setup for the account is reasonably robust: lengthy initial password and none of the account security questions involve actual names or places, they are random multi-character responses. In practice I have two accounts: the iCloud one and a separate iTunes one, again stemming from the days before the idea of a single account covering all things became the norm. I can see possible problems with this but so far it has worked OK. Think I’ll leave things as they are but I’ll move away from using the *@iCloud.com address and stick to the others. Thanks for the advice. > On 6 Mar 2017, at 00:07, Macs R We <[email protected]> wrote: > > The vast majority of people have Apple IDs that are email IDs on providers > that are not iCloud. The vast majority of these people never take advantage > of iCloud mail by creating a separate iCloud mail ID. These people don't > have your problem — their (main) email password and their Apple ID password > are not related in any way. > > For any one of these folks who does take advantage of iCloud mail by taking > the time to create a mail id, their password for iCloud mail (specifically) > and their Apple ID password will always be the same password. That's just > the way the service is arranged. But for most of them, iCloud isn't their > main mail service, so the security problem is second-order. Plus, their > Apple ID still doesn't end in iCloud, because they had to create an Apple ID > first before they could create an iCloud mail address. > > In your case, you somehow created an Apple ID that ends in iCloud. I know > other people that have done it, and I'm mildly curious as to how one makes it > work in that order. But it's still going to have the same password for that > mailbox and your Apple cloud services. > > I wouldn't sweat the mail. Anybody can send mail claiming to be anybody, > even just using a standard mailer like Apple Mail. But more to the point, > anybody can register a membership on a website and provide somebody else's > email address in the registration, either accidentally or on purpose, > whereupon that poor bastard gets all the subsequent mail. > > (I have an email account on AOL that is so old it's just my last name — and I > have a world-wide krewe of clones who share my last name either as their last > or first names, who carelessly sign me up for crap on the Internet all the > time. That's life.) > > Such activity says nothing about the security of your password, because > actual access to your account isn't necessary to the abuse. > >> On Mar 5, 2017, at 1:48 AM, Chris Walker <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Since there’s some pretty knowledgeable people on here regarding iCloud I >> wonder if someone could tell me something about mail and iCloud security. >> >> At present you sign in to your account using an email address of the form: >> [email protected] with a long complex password and then follow the >> security questions - best friend’s name and so on. FWIW these don’t need >> to be actual names they can be random characters so long as you don’t forget >> them. This one password also gives access to email and all services. >> >> Is it possible to have a separate password for email or is there just the >> one for everything? I can’t see any way of doing a separate one. >> >> Reason I ask is that I’ve received a pile of stuff from some gaming site >> thanking me for signing up - I haven’t - which makes me wonder if someone >> has hacked the email. They could simply have picked up the address from >> somewhere and be trying it on. >> >> I’ve changed the main iCloud password to be safe but wondered if it’s >> possible to have a separate one for mail. >> _______________________________________________ >> MacOSX-talk mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk > _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
