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Jason Ginsberg / 7.31.2023Home / Email Security

How to delete an iCloud email account—a step-by-step tutorial

Want to declutter your email correspondence or migrate to a new provider? Learn how to delete an iCloud email account and switch to a more secure alternative!

While iCloud Mail is the default email provider for most Apple users, there are many reasons to consider alternatives. Some people have privacy concerns about Apple products, while others decide to transition based on personal preferences. Whatever the reasons, this article will explain how to delete an iCloud email account.If you only want to declutter your correspondence, this tutorial will also show you:

How to mass-delete emails on iCloud
How to remove iCloud email account from your iPhone
What email service providers might be worthy alternatives to iCloud Mail

Get a well-organized and secure email providerPrioritize your data security by switching to Skiff Mail's end-to-end encryption coupled with a beautifully designed interface

How to delete an iCloud email account via browser

Deleting an iCloud email address also means permanently clearing out any associated data, such as:

Contacts
Emails
Calendar events

If you’re unsure of whether you’ll need these in the future, make backups before proceeding. After that, you can delete your iCloud email address by following these steps:

Open your web browser
Visit the Apple ID Management page
Sign in and go to your iCloud Settings
Go to the Data & Privacy page
Choose the Manage Your Data option
Confirm your identity via two-factor authentication if you have it enabled
Scroll down to the Mail category and click on Manage
Choose the Delete Email Address option
Confirm your choice on the pop-up window by clicking on Delete from Account

Once you've deleted your iCloud email account, update other accounts or email services with your new email address.

How to back up iCloud data

Making a backup of the data before deleting your email account will ensure you don’t lose anything important in the transition to a new email account—like photos, messages, and app configurations.Here’s a step-by-step guide to exporting your iCloud emails:

Visit iCloud.com
Sign in with your Apple ID
Go to Mail
Click the checkboxes next to the messages you want to export (to select multiple emails, hold the Command key on Mac or Ctrl key on Windows keyboards)
Choose between Export as EML and Export as PDF options
Select where you’ll save the exported files
Click Save

To export your iCloud Calendar data, follow these steps:

Launch the Calendar app on your Apple device
Choose the calendar from the left-hand sidebar
Open the File section from the upper toolbar
Click on Export
Choose your desired location
Click Save

Backing up your iCloud contacts is almost identical:

Open the Contacts app
Open the View section from the toolbar
Choose Show Groups
Click All Contacts
Open the File menu
Click Export
Choose Export vCard
Pick a location and click Save

How to mass-delete all emails on iCloud

Deleting opened emails regularly is an excellent way to keep your inbox clutter-free and organized. Emails take up your storage space, of which you only get 5 GB for free. After a few years of continuous use, you might need to delete all emails as they’re bound to pile up even with the best inbox maintenance habits.You can easily mass-delete emails from your iPhone in a few steps:

Open the Apple Mail app
Choose your iCloud account in Mailboxes
Click on Edit
Choose Select All
Click Delete

Once you click Select All, you can manually unselect the important emails you want to keep.This process doesn’t delete your emails permanently—it only sends them to the Trash folder. To discard the emails completely, go to the Settings screen of your Mail app and tap Empty Bin.

How to remove an iCloud email address from your iPhone

You don’t necessarily need to delete your iCloud account permanently if you want to streamline email communication—you can remove one of your email addresses from your iPhone.By removing an email account, you’ll still have all your emails and associated data, but they won’t be available on that specific device. You can access the account from your iPad or computer.To remove an email account from your iPhone, follow these steps:

Open Settings
Go to Mail
Tap on Accounts
Choose an email account to remove
Toggle the Use on this iPhone option off

The instructions aren’t limited to iCloud accounts—you can use the same process to remove a Gmail, Yahoo, or any other email account from your iPhone. The only difference is that other email providers won’t have the Use on this iPhone toggle—there will be a Delete Account option instead.

Why deleting iCloud email might be the right call

While many owners of Apple devices use it, the iCloud email service comes with a few notable downsides, including:

Limited amount of free storage
Optimization limited to iOS devices
Security concerns related to iCloud email

Make no compromises with Skiff MailProtected by advanced encryption features, Skiff's productivity suite has dedicated apps for iOS and Android devices

Limited amount of free storage

Most email services provide a certain amount of free storage with a basic account and require you to switch to a paid subscription to get more. Apple users get 5 GB of storage and a maximum of 20 MB for attachments.The space isn’t reserved only for emails—the same 5 GB is shared between your calendar, backups, and documents. If you use iCloud to save photos, you’ll burn through that 5 GB quickly.

Not optimized for non-iOS devices

iCloud email doesn’t support POP email servers, limiting your server settings to IMAP.POP protocols download all emails to your device and delete them from the email server. Your device is where the emails are stored, and switching to a different device means losing them unless you back them up manually.With IMAP, your messages are stored on the server, and email services like iCloud Mail create temporary copies on your device while you’re viewing them. This allows you to access all emails from any device.POP is less popular today, but IMAP comes with some security vulnerabilities—hackers who gain access to iCloud’s servers could obtain your emails, for example. While POP requires more configuration and is less user-friendly, some businesses and individuals still prefer it.It’s not the end of the world for most users, but it’s clear that Apple primarily intended iCloud to be used with Apple Mail on iOS devices.There’s no dedicated iCloud Mail app for Android devices. You can still access your emails via a mobile browser, but the user experience will be poor compared to a dedicated app.

Security concerns related to iCloud email

Ultimately, iCloud email runs into the same problem as other mainstream email services like Gmail—subpar encryption and security.iCloud lets you choose between two types of data encryption:

Type of encryption	Description
Standard data protection	In-transit and at-rest protection for iCloud data, with encryption keys stored on Apple’s servers
Advanced data protection	End-to-end encryption, with encryption keys stored on user devices

The standard data protection is only as strong as Apple’s server security because your encryption keys are kept there. This exposes your emails to hacker attacks, which have frequently affected Apple servers in the past.Advanced data protection is based on end-to-end encryption (E2EE)—the strongest form of data security. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t support E2EE security for iCloud emails and Contacts. This encryption type is only available for iCloud Photos, Notes, and Backup.Unlike Gmail, Apple doesn’t have a history of misusing the contents of users’ emails for ad targeting and reselling to third parties. Still, their service doesn’t provide the highest level of data encryption for your email communication.If you’re looking for a modern email service with full E2EE support, check out Skiff Mail.

Ensure your email security with Skiff Mail

Unlike iCloud email, Skiff was built with end-to-end encryption from the ground up. The platform was designed as a private, secure, and anonymous email service that fully protects your online data.Skiff employs device-based E2EE with a pair of keys:

Type of key	Description
Public key	Encrypts an outgoing message. It is shared between users when the email is sent
Private key	Decrypts an incoming message. It is stored on the recipient’s device

This two-key system ensures no one but the intended recipient can read your emails, including Skiff’s employees or anyone else who gains access to their servers. Hacker attacks can’t jeopardize your messages because they can’t decrypt them without the unique private key.

Don’t compromise on accessibility and ease of use

Source: SkiffSkiff offers an exceptional user experience along with top-tier security. The platform has an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and numerous useful features.Besides an E2EE email service, Skiff includes a full-blown productivity suite that can compete with iCloud and Google Workplace. A free Skiff account gets you access to:

Skiff Drive—End-to-end encrypted cloud storage that lets you share files via secure links
Skiff Pages—Private document editor similar to Google Docs that automatically encrypts your work and lets you collaborate online safely
Skiff Calendar—Secure calendar tool compatible with Skiff Mail that comes with video-conferencing features

Skiff is also a fully open source and transparent email platform—you can learn the ins and outs of its encryption technology by reading this whitepaper. There’s even an official Skiff Discord channel where you can get detailed answers straight from the developers.

Get started with Skiff Mail in three easy steps

Get access to the Skiff productivity suit by following these steps:

Visit the Skiff signup page
Create your username and password
Keep your emails and files secure with Skiff’s encrypted storage

With the available 10 GB, a free Skiff account provides twice as much storage space as iCloud’s basic subscription tier. You can always upgrade to one of Skiff’s three affordable paid plans to get more space and additional perks like custom domains and more email aliases.

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