Last month Apple confirmed that it would soon beef up encryption for iCloud email following a report detailing security flaws in major email services. While Apple previously encrypted emails sent between its own iCloud customers, now the company has enabled encryption for emails in transit between iCloud and third-party services for me.com and mac.com email addresses.
The change is documented on Google’s transparency website that shows the percentage of emails encrypted in transit for both inbound and outbound email exchanges (pictured below): Expand Expanding Close
With the release of iOS 6 Beta 3 in July, Apple already started rolling out its new @iCloud email addresses starting with users creating new Apple IDs or enabling mail on iCloud for the first time. Since then, Apple has started rolling out @iCloud addresses to existing @me.com and @mac.com users, reserving users the same address but with the iCloud.com domain. Today, Apple is sending out notification emails to more iCloud users to inform them an iCloud email address has been reserved and is ready to access.
Apple provided instructions for switching to the address here.
The Apple discussion boards are starting to heat up with an issue related to users not receiving emails from particular domains sent to their me.com/ .mac accounts. The problem appears to specifically related to RoadRunner and Comcast domains, and is affecting users across the U.S.
The issue is related to me.com accounts being unable to receive emails from rr.com and comcast.com domains. One user reports being unable to receive emails from “hawaii.rr.com”, while others report the same for “tampabay.rr.com”, and “rochester.rr.com”. It appears Apple’s servers aren’t playing nice with the domain, although some users report receiving emails up to 24 hours late, which would indicate the domain isn’t being blocked entirely. Emails forwarded from one account, such as an rr.com account, to a .me account are apparently not affected. There are a few mentions of the same issue for emails sent from Comcast.net as well.
Just today my boss’s emails stopped showing up in my inbox – online, in Mail, or on my phone. I am able to send files to him. He is sending and receiving emails. The problem seems to be entirely between hawaii.rr.com (his email, time warner/roadrunner) and my .me/.mac mail account (neither work). I am able to use my gmail account and my .me/.mac account just fine together.
At this point the problem seems to be inconsistent, but impacting a lot of users across the country nonetheless. Users in the Apple Support Communities report that Comcast claims it’s a “a .mac problem”, while one poster says rr.com has forwarded the issue to their engineering team. Most seem to believe it’s an issue on Apple’s end. We’ll keep you posted when Apple addresses the problem. Expand Expanding Close
