I don't like that it's required for developers to include if they include any other third-party sign-in.
US competition laws are outdated with undue reliance on the concept of a monopoly.
I don't care if you're a monopoly or a third of the market or even a small company. If you run a marketplace or app store or similar platform, you should NOT be able to:
- Force usage of a separate product of yours over/with competitors (in this case, Apple sign-in, but also Apple Pay instead of Google Pay, etc.)
- Prevent competing products from appearing (whether Apple not allowing other browser rendering engines, Amazon not allowing Google Home or Chromecast to be sold, etc.)
- Rank your own items higher in search results etc. if competitors can't bid to do the same e.g. sponsored results for everyone including yourself (so Amazon Basics or Google Shopping needs to be listed as a sponsored result, not as a separate feature)
This is the kind of thing 21st-century legislation for fair competition should address.
Completely agree. There needs to be some concept of a marketplace that doesn't have monopoly power, and a list of "fair play" rules around those. The only difference between Apple's actions and 90's Microsoft is marketshare. It's a similarly anti-competitive in intent.
European Union has some regulation for financial markets that have had similar issues in the past. The regulators must approve a rule book for market place, in this case of trading venue, which including onboarding and listing rules. Those rules must not discriminate against anyone - one cannot do arbitrary decisions to block or hinder someone. Everybody must access the markets fairly.
We already seen the regulatory outreach coming to app stores when EU ruled that Google was hindering the distribution of Aptoide store for Android.
A well run company could build an arbitrarily large technological and financial moat on the back of consumer welfare, until it amasses enough power to completely subjugate regulatory bodies. (This is all theoretical, I don't think Apple is at that point). OTOH, anticompetitiveness is an easier thing to detect and act upon before it gets out of control.
> I don't like that it's required for developers to include if they include any other third-party sign-in.
Curious, why not?
Because if i understand correctly it's designed so that Apple cannot see any of the data...
So for what reason would you want to provide another third-party provider, but not Apple Signin?
To me it seems a huge win for consumers privacy wise, and Developers have nothing to loose.
I don't buy Apple products (well not exactly true I have a MacBook but only because I'm forced to use that to build for iOS). But for my app which uses 1st party login or Facebook as an alternative I am now forced to provide Apple login. If Google follows suite I'll be forced to provide Google login on Android, etc. Probably I'll just end up removing all third party login too much of a hassle, although I'll definitely lose users.
They have a monopoly on the hundreds of millions of people who have an iPhone, which are typically the wealthiest mobile consumers (Sorry Android guys). If I have a software service I need to deliver to my customers smartphone, and they happen to own an iPhone, then Apple has full control over how I can do business with them. All they have to do is allow sideloading of apps with big warnings as an option and they can run the app store however they want. Until then, it's bullshit.
Welp, there we go. I was surprised to see Apple introduce a feature that improved things for their customers without some ridiculous restriction and here we are: mandatory inclusion for app developers.
Good job Apple, you raised your image only to crush it again with anticompetitive bullshit.
The killer feature here is the anonymous email address forwarding. It shows Apple actively ceding an opportunity for exchanging marketing data in favour of user privacy. It does feel like Apple are taking privacy seriously and positioning it as more than just a marketing campaign.
I am tired of seeing my email address popping up on leaks and I don't want to rely on spam filters any more. The best spam filter out there is built into gmail, but they are no longer interested in actually preventing spam, instead they want to control it. Now Google shows me ads that look exactly like emails in my inbox, inside the iOS app.
I wasn't happy with this so I built https://idbloc.co, which is basically equivalent to the disposable email element of Sign in with Apple, now that Apple built it into their Sign In, I guess now it exists for users who don't want to or can't use Apple.
It also gives Apple far more control over the ecosystem. By not providing 3rd parties access to email, Apple makes themselves not only the controllers of the physical devices and also over the full identity of their users. My viewpoint is one of decentralization, and I don't see this move as being a long term beneficial one.
It's not a stretch of an imagination that Apple might cut a developer out of the app store for some abstract-defined violation of terms (as they do now) and now ALSO cut that developer from the identity/contact with their users. In total, this is almost the ultimate kill switch to push companies to adhere to their policies or risk a total shutout. This scenario might be considered overblown, if it wasn't that Apple already exercises pushy monopoly(esk) control on their ecosystem. The new identity system expands that control to now outside the Apple hardware ecosystem, possibly affecting platforms like Android.
I'm ranting here a little, but I think we should be cautious of accepting privacy as the sole reason Apple wants to enforce all app authentication to use.
> By not providing 3rd parties access to email, Apple makes themselves not only the controllers of the physical devices and also over the full identity of their users.
No they're not. They're preventing third parties from accessing your data. You can communicate with your customers just fine; it's just that if you sell their data (or get hacked) the email you get is useless.
Apple holding the ID information and all that that pertains is the only company I would like to hold that data. I can see no reason why Facebook or Google or any company that profits on the sale of information should have my data. I appreciate that advertisers want to maximize their ad spends but ad-tech has gotten so creepy ... Apple’s move here I fully support. I look forward to seeing apps using it more often and perhaps eventually all the apps I use as well so that I can move all my logins via it.
Apple sells me thousand dollar phones and services. Until they start selling my data to ad brokers and becoming a Google I’ll support Apple on this going forward.
By not providing 3rd parties access to email, Apple makes themselves not only the controllers of the physical devices and also over the full identity of their users
Third party apps don't have to use e-mail for logins. They can use user names.
Backers of e-mail based sign-in often call it a "frictionless" method for the users to sign up. What it really is, is a frictionless method for them to collect information about their users.
Apple not only gets more power over the app developers, they also get more power over the users. If you want to leave apple devices behind, you'll now need to change your e-mail addresses for every service.
I agree that Apple's intentions are not beneficent, but that's also not the point. There is a strong bias in tech/geek culture towards "decentralization" (it's even become something of a marketing buzzword thanks to recent technologies), but decentralization does not always result in more power for the individual. Look at the Android ecosystem. Do you feel like you're in control on your Android device? I used to think that. Maybe 2-3+ years ago. Today? Not so much. I feel like an Android device is just a means for any number of third parties to gain access to the most private details of my life. That does not make me feel like I have power. It makes me feel powerless.
I think you are right that it will be an issue in the long term if things stay the same. Somewhere I hope this forces the other players in the field to react, to avoid Apple getting too much power.
I don’t see anyone else right now that can force app devs to support this scheme (for instance I saw countless signup pages that reject gmail’s + syntax, companies clearly don’t want to be filtered), nor that would be trusted for now by users to not abuse the situation.
Perhaps Microsoft could ? barely, as they for instance were sticking ads in their browser.
So, in a way I see Apple doing what only them can do, and hope it creates enough precedence for other minor identity managers to step in and being a more sane solution for the long run.
Yes but as a user I don’t care. If a developer gets booted then it’s probably because the developer didn’t do something that was in the best interest of the user. Probably frustrating for developers, but again, not my problem. I also highly doubt Apple would do this without a good reason, so again, this is pro-user. As a user, I don’t care if it’s annoying to implement some feature or other or computer with onerous requirements. If a developer doesnt want to comply, then shut down the company.
I don’t understand this complaining. Everyone who has a business has to deal with these sorts of things. That’s why people pay businesses, so we don’t have to deal with the hassle. This is the essence of running a service, such as developing apps.
but this is a good next move for us consumers if you think about the overall position and dynamics of the industry relative to privacy. but as you point out, it doesn't mean we can let our guard down. we have to remain vigilant to imbalances of power that threaten our civil liberties (like the right to privacy).
once apple starts gaining traction with this feature, it's positioning will inevitably change, possibly for the worse, and then we back another borse who will keep apple in check.
>It shows Apple actively seceding an opportunity for exchanging marketing data in favour of user privacy.
Apple isn't ceding anything here. They still have your email address, they have the record of your activity on the site you're accessing. They are withholding your email address from the site you're accessing, which is good for your privacy. But you make it sound like they've sacrificed something in doing that.
If google had done this, everybody would be up in arms about how google was further overreaching in their goal to gain complete control of the internet and are preventing poor little mom and pop websites from being able to meet their marketing goals.
So I take it that you didn't watch the video or read the transcript where they state explicitly that they don't record or track that information.
Just because you believe the FB/G nonsense that the internet is only possible by gross violations of user privacy doesn't mean everyone else buys into it.
They don’t have a “record of your activity.” They only know that you have signed in with Apple on a site. They aren’t tracking your behavior or usage. The Apple JS doesn’t have to be on any page except the sign up/in.
I'm a big fan of the feature, was quite thrilled to see it, but aren't they the provider of the redirect? So there is privacy to anyone but Apple: they'll know (if they wish to) that you signed up on Some Site with a burner email in a way they might not have if you used a regular burner email service.
Personally, I'm fine with Apple having that kind of info as I generally trust them and also that my main concern is the same with your frustration of my email ending up in yet another leak seemingly frequently.
> Personally, I'm fine with Apple having that kind of info as I generally trust them
...up until Apple decides to change their leadership, or their business model, or the mobile market implodes and they start looking for new revenue streams, or their relationship with the US government changes, or ...
I get that as a practical matter we are forced to trust somebody somewhere eventually, but at best we should be saying that "Apple doesn't seem motivated to abuse this information for now."
Conceivably they could theoretically even spy on your emails with the companies you 've signed up with, including apple's competitors. It could even lead to potential legal issues for apple. At least plain email is considered distributed and does not rely on gatekeepers.
Facebook has had anonymous email redirects for years. Developers hated it, and circumvented it; it hands control over the communication channel from the developer to Facebook, and not to the user. The same will be true with Apple login.
There's obvious pros and cons to the developer owning that communication channel, or to a middleman owning that communication channel.
What Apple is doing here is using their total control of the application distribution channel on iOS to hold apps hostage to add an option to sell users on handing Apple control, or possibly reduce their growth by forcing them to remove the other login options.
It's mildly pro-consumer, but I think it's anywhere from mildly to very developer hostile. I'm not positive it will have a sustained effect, as developers may do what they did with Facebook and detect the proxied email and ask for the real one in its place.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I believe Apple still absolutely has your real data as well as the ability to link it to all the anonymous throwaway addresses. They just chose not to give away that data for free to every app that is asking nicely.
I agree, this is some win for privacy against random rogue apps, but I don't see how Apple would secede anything.
If you watch the video or read the transcript they explicitly state that they do not record any of the information.
They obviously have a mapping of cloak address -> real address, but there's no requirement for them to have any record of which apps got which addresses.
>It shows Apple actively ceding an opportunity for exchanging marketing data in favour of user privacy.
This is not a new thing.
For example, when the iPad launched and digital versions of magazines began to be available, Apple allowed a subscriber to provide the magazine publishing house with their email address, but also required that they be allowed to refuse to provide it.
The new thing here is to give the user a way to shut off abusive spamming of an email address they have chosen to provide.
Is it unreasonable to believe that companies will block disposable Apple email addresses, just as they do, e.g., mailinator.com emails - often for authwalls intended purely for tracking users?
I think it's somewhat unreasonable to believe that, in the sense that Apple is pretty explicitly using their clout to make it much harder for companies to do this.
When a company blocks Mailinator, they're giving up a pretty small number of users -- those who know about Mailinator, use it, and refuse to sign up for a service that blocks it. Since Sign In with Apple is required for any iOS app that supports 3rd-party login, any company (with an app, which is mostly what this is all about anyway) that decides to block this new type of authentication will be forced to either give up all 3rd-party login options (costing them existing users who sign in this way and increasing the cost to acquire new ones), or give up their iOS app -- in either case, this probably means giving up a large number of users.
If Apple doesn’t place some guarantees around the emails, then yes, I’ll be blocking the relay domain. I don’t care to know a user’s true identity, I just want to ensure that the same person can’t use the system to trivially create unlimited new anonymous accounts on my system.
I’d like to see these:
1. Restricted to people who have associated a physical Apple device, and
2. No ability for the user to re-scramble the anonymous identifier once it is assigned to a service.
If these two criteria are met, I won’t consider it a throwaway email service.
I'm sure they will, but I'd take that as evidence that they do intend to sell it or spam me.
Which would be even more reason not to sign in at all. That said I'm sure that whenever the official guidelines come out there will be something explicit about not doing so (although of course that would only apply to apps)
Hilariously because I read this my brain got into the "wait, what was the other option? which one should I be using?" state and I had to double check myself.
I don't comment often on here, but just wanted to say thank you for this tool. I will be thoroughly checking out https://idbloc.co and making good use of it! It looks like it will be simpler than using disposable emails, and definitely better than creating random emails!
A little trick I've found out is having a GSuite account added to the Gmail app and generally always using the "all inboxes" view, I've seen no ads with this setup.
I wish it allowed you to supply an email “formula” (for example “apple-sign-ups-${supplied-unique-id}@my-domain”). I understand this is a particularly “pro” request, but I’d still like it.
Again, from a customer angle I’m not 100% sold on this. I don’t want to miss an email because Apple servers are down, and if Apple decides to kill an app I don’t like, I also want the ability to disagree. Separately, I want something that wouldn’t be a pain to use on non-Apple devices.
That "formula" allows the service to identify you the user because it's your domain (or group you into a subset of users if you share the domain with other people). Apple's relay service right now gives the application zero new information about you.
Don't most people already use a secondary email for signups to sites that they don't wish to hear from? I believe it's a solved problem, even for average users.
Why do we think Apple is not going to start reading this forwarded email and then using it to target ads? Sign-in with Apple makes them gmail... but without having to provide a web interface for reading email.
I do like the layer of indirection, but I have to imagine that someday the shareholders are going to ask "why not target ads like Google is doing" and they're not going to have a good answer.
Because (if you watched the talk or read the transcript) they already explicitly stated that they will not?
They've also explicitly stated that they will not record any information about interaction with a service.
Based on Apple's general approach to data security, I suspect that there is no "company A got alias address Y" table. In principle all that they need is a table of alias->real. On the other hand maybe it would be useful to have such a table in the case a site gets compromised/starts selling information?
But they have stated explicitly in a public video that they will not record interactions or emails you send, so I'm sure it would be lawsuit city if the reneged on that.
Because the moment they do that they lose the whole reputation they’ve spent years and years building as the ‘privacy focused tech company’. User trust goes out the window.
First of all, iCloud does have a web interface. Second of all they can’t read your email. Reviewing Apple’s numerous explanations of how the system works should make that clear. If paranoia gets the best of you, nobody is forcing you to implement sign in with Apple and you are free to not use sites that do.
It seems like it could be really good for users, but the fact that it's _required_ for any apps that use other 3rd-party sign-in options and that it's _required_ to be listed first among those options leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I can't even imagine what would happen if Google did the same thing with Google Sign In and the Play store.
Disclaimer: I work for Google, not on anything related, and am speaking for myself (as always).
However it is _required_ that you add Sign in With Apple. I'm all for privacy but I disagree with this move because apple said "You must add Apple Sign In" rather than "You must allow one form of anonymous login" which means they are forcing developers to use their tools.
Additionally, if the app only has FB or Google login and you don't use either, you can just not use the app
Reading and replying to this comment was not free then.....
Free in the colloquial sense means "no money required", otherwise nothing is free since there is always some cost, if not an opportunity cost. What are you going to do, complain that an app required bandwidth to download?
I can kind of see your point regarding paid apps, but for free apps, you aren't really losing anything, besides maybe a few seconds of your time. If you don't like the authentication options the app offers, you can just uninstall it, and for 99% of the apps in the app store there's multiple alternatives that will offer a different set of options.
I know what you're saying but I'm okay with it. In this case Apple chose users over developers. iOS developers have to do a little more work (Apple has made it very easy from what I've seen of the framework) and have a little less freedom but users signing in to apps using 3rd party auth are guaranteed the privacy protections Apple is promising. They drew a line in the sand by making their solution mandatory but I think they had to to deliver what they're promising to users (which I think is great).
That privacy seems a bit overboard though. This is fine if a user can create his account directly inside the app. But it's not very clear how to support a workflow where you have an organization with multiple users authorized by an admin to use the app. How can the admin add a user to his organization, if he doesn't know in advance the user randomly generated email? I guess you could send an invitation code, and let the user enter that code after the apple sign in, to associate the account to the authorized user. This sounds more complex for the user than a workflow where the admin can directly authorize specific emails.
Apple knows that for most people (unlike this website's audience), the privacy concern is not as important as using That Cool New App, and if this was just another option developers could, but didn't have to implement, many apps would choose not to -- and most people would still download them. The only way to make sure that most users' email/login/usage isn't being sold or used to track them is to force developers to offer Apple's auth option, and make it as easy to use as choosing to log in with Facebook or Google.
> I can't even imagine what would happen if Google did the same thing with Google Sign In and the Play store.
If Apple made its money by mining its users' data, there would be a big uproar about this announcement, too. But Apple made it very clear that they will not be doing that with this data, and is moving more and more towards establishing itself as the privacy-focused alternative to Google... So this is by and large (and obviously there are many people with reservations, whether about Apple forcing developers' hands, or about trusting a big company in general) being seen as more of a Good Thing.
Google should just add a similar requirement in response. With this rule Apple is forcing their signup method to be taken up across all platforms (web, Android, iOS) because you can't only enable logging in with Apple on one platform.
If Google were to implement the same requirement, any cross platform app with Apple's login would also now have a Log in with Google button, making sure that Apple won't be getting any Oauth monopoly any time soon just to keep them in check.
The SSO "market" is only a market if the SSO providers are monetizing your data at the expense of your privacy. Private authentication is not a "market" almost any of us needs or wants, but rather a right that we deserve.
My understanding is that putting SIWA first is in their Human Interface Guidelines, which (nominally) are not mandatory. Some apps have been rejected for HIG violations, however, so maybe they'd enforce that (but I doubt it). Plenty of HIG-violating apps make it into the App Store, so they definitely don't enforce all HIG violations.
To me this is a fair rule and benefetial for the end users, it will give more options to them. It simply says "if there are competitors, you must include us".
I'm not an Apple user, but I would expect Apple to provide and guarantee that you can log in any app with your Apple login. Seems fair to me.
Also, I'm pretty confident that Google offering a privacy-oriented SSO on Google Play would be appreciated by everyone. Privacy on Android is such a joke : any app can freely read the accounts present on your phone, they don't even need you to sign in to identify you
Well, maybe if Google didn’t do stuff like trick users into installing privacy invasive apps by using developer certificates that were only suppose to be used for internal apps you might have a leg to stand on....
Can you point to anyone who was tricked? I signed up for that program myself. It was very clear what I had signed up for. I wasn't tricked into it any more than a Nielsen family is tricked into getting paid to use a Nielsen box.
I'm thrilled about implementing this on our app so we can make registration and login even more smooth without having to be in bed with Google and Facebook. Can't wait to implement it.
I'm even more thrilled to see, that according to the Okta article linked in another thread by simonw [1], Apple uses OAuth and OpenID Connect for this, and not some home-grown protocol.
That article seems worthy of discussion on its own. I submitted it (expecting to find an existing discussion) but it turns out it hadn't been submitted yet.
CAUTION: There's a redirect loop bug when you open this link in Safari. Seems to be an error in their JS. The only option is to close the tab. Works fine in Firefox and Chrome.
Just so people can watch the detailed developer introduction.
Specifically:
It verifies the "realness" of the account, so everyone claiming that they need user's real email address for "fraud detection" can't argue that nonsense anymore. We all know that argument was just a cover for "we want to be able to spam our users with impunity", but this specifically addresses that argument just to be sure.
Just because an account is real doesn't mean it isn't spam. Most of the forum registration spam is done by real people.
Also, I think most users anyway use a secondary or "throwaway" mail account to sign up to various websites that are not critical to them. This problem is largely already solved.
1. If my app is both in IOS and Android, and maybe Windows, would this work across platforms? The answer looks like no... Apple's definition of "multiplatform" means iOS, TVOS and WatchOS, and some javascript for the web. (given Apple's poor track record for anything web-based, good luck with that). If you want to port your app to Android or Native Windows, good luck with that. Your users are locked in.
2. If I have an app that is a competitor to Facebook, and FB decides to cut me off, I can use the existing emails so the user are not locked out the app (i.e. they will be sent an email with a link to create a password and keep their account).
This looks impossible with the apple sign in. Basically if Apple decides to cut you off, your user's accounts are lost.
No matter what some folks believe that 'everything social is evil', some applications providers provide the social log-in just because the user that prefer using them over entering the same information over and over.
Instead of entering email, authorizing/verifying it, and having a profile picture, a social log-in provides those for you.
As I am building an app that has the social login (Google and Facebook) as well as simple email sign in, this feels like an additional burden that I'd prefer not to (for the two main reasons above).
Feels very anti-competitive.... Apple should provide the log-in as an option, and compete with its own merits, but not force app makers to use it.
Also, I think apple is being totally evil now: By forcing companies like Spotify and other competitors to use their log in, they are creating an very intrusive/invasive way to monitor their competitors.
Eg. Netflix and Spotify and a myriad of other Apple's direct competitor are forced to be locked in the Apple's vendor sign in trap.
Not because it’s Apple, but rather because Apple are exploiting their position as iOS App Store gatekeepers to require developers to add Sign In With Apple. Mozilla don’t have this position / power.
I think people would have the same issue if Google required ‘Sign In With Google’ in play store apps that have Facebook login, and returned throwaway / proxies email addresses.
I haven’t seen anyone upset over the feature set. The only complaints I’ve seen are those uneasy with Apple’s forceful hand. They are both the gatekeeper to the store and now gatekeeper to the login. This is happening at the same time they are being investigated for anti-trust.
> they’ve been implementing privacy features for several years…
Yet this one is not a pro-privacy feature, it's an "apple owns your privacy" feature. Apple will control your account access and even be able to read your emails. Sure you trust them, but in the future they 'll use it to push their own ecosystem (like apple payments) to developers. We 've had single sign-ons for too many years to know that any ecosystem lock-in is a bad thing. As bad as email sounds, it's still the free-est , most decentralized login provider available.
> If Mozilla or name your blessed organization of choice came up with this system, most of them would be fine with it.
Mozilla came up with Persona, which would be great if they pushed it further and perhapps provided an anonymous email relayer like this instead of being based on existing email providers. With Mozilla the big advantage is that your account is not tied to any other service, real name, credit card etc. I wouldn't use Apple Login to sign up to a porn site, despite the high standards of apple's security.
Readit News
US competition laws are outdated with undue reliance on the concept of a monopoly.
I don't care if you're a monopoly or a third of the market or even a small company. If you run a marketplace or app store or similar platform, you should NOT be able to:
- Force usage of a separate product of yours over/with competitors (in this case, Apple sign-in, but also Apple Pay instead of Google Pay, etc.)
- Prevent competing products from appearing (whether Apple not allowing other browser rendering engines, Amazon not allowing Google Home or Chromecast to be sold, etc.)
- Rank your own items higher in search results etc. if competitors can't bid to do the same e.g. sponsored results for everyone including yourself (so Amazon Basics or Google Shopping needs to be listed as a sponsored result, not as a separate feature)
This is the kind of thing 21st-century legislation for fair competition should address.
We already seen the regulatory outreach coming to app stores when EU ruled that Google was hindering the distribution of Aptoide store for Android.
The Web?
I've seen reports that Apple is finally starting to fix issued related to adding PWAs to the home screen as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox
Essentially, the book advocates that the only goal antitrust laws should have is to protect consumer welfare, not competitors.
IMO, Apple’s requirement doesn’t feel like it would harm consumer welfare.
Curious, why not?
Because if i understand correctly it's designed so that Apple cannot see any of the data... So for what reason would you want to provide another third-party provider, but not Apple Signin?
To me it seems a huge win for consumers privacy wise, and Developers have nothing to loose.
not a win for privacy, but i'm sure there are some that would be unhappy about not getting the data the other providers are giving them.
As someone who has never bought an Apple product, I can safely say their monopolistic practices don't affect me.
Stop buying Apple products. Its that simple.
Good job Apple, you raised your image only to crush it again with anticompetitive bullshit.
I am tired of seeing my email address popping up on leaks and I don't want to rely on spam filters any more. The best spam filter out there is built into gmail, but they are no longer interested in actually preventing spam, instead they want to control it. Now Google shows me ads that look exactly like emails in my inbox, inside the iOS app.
I wasn't happy with this so I built https://idbloc.co, which is basically equivalent to the disposable email element of Sign in with Apple, now that Apple built it into their Sign In, I guess now it exists for users who don't want to or can't use Apple.
It's not a stretch of an imagination that Apple might cut a developer out of the app store for some abstract-defined violation of terms (as they do now) and now ALSO cut that developer from the identity/contact with their users. In total, this is almost the ultimate kill switch to push companies to adhere to their policies or risk a total shutout. This scenario might be considered overblown, if it wasn't that Apple already exercises pushy monopoly(esk) control on their ecosystem. The new identity system expands that control to now outside the Apple hardware ecosystem, possibly affecting platforms like Android.
I'm ranting here a little, but I think we should be cautious of accepting privacy as the sole reason Apple wants to enforce all app authentication to use.
No they're not. They're preventing third parties from accessing your data. You can communicate with your customers just fine; it's just that if you sell their data (or get hacked) the email you get is useless.
Apple sells me thousand dollar phones and services. Until they start selling my data to ad brokers and becoming a Google I’ll support Apple on this going forward.
There is no requirement that you only support apple sign-in, you just aren't allowed to require user's to sacrifice their privacy to use your app.
Third party apps don't have to use e-mail for logins. They can use user names.
Backers of e-mail based sign-in often call it a "frictionless" method for the users to sign up. What it really is, is a frictionless method for them to collect information about their users.
I think you are right that it will be an issue in the long term if things stay the same. Somewhere I hope this forces the other players in the field to react, to avoid Apple getting too much power.
I don’t see anyone else right now that can force app devs to support this scheme (for instance I saw countless signup pages that reject gmail’s + syntax, companies clearly don’t want to be filtered), nor that would be trusted for now by users to not abuse the situation.
Perhaps Microsoft could ? barely, as they for instance were sticking ads in their browser.
So, in a way I see Apple doing what only them can do, and hope it creates enough precedence for other minor identity managers to step in and being a more sane solution for the long run.
You are the 1st party, the service you want to use is the 2nd party and Apple is the 3rd party.
I don’t understand this complaining. Everyone who has a business has to deal with these sorts of things. That’s why people pay businesses, so we don’t have to deal with the hassle. This is the essence of running a service, such as developing apps.
once apple starts gaining traction with this feature, it's positioning will inevitably change, possibly for the worse, and then we back another borse who will keep apple in check.
unlike on game of thrones, our watch never ends.
Deleted Comment
So you better log in with your own email, but of the 3, I’d rather pick Apple as the lesser evil!
Apple isn't ceding anything here. They still have your email address, they have the record of your activity on the site you're accessing. They are withholding your email address from the site you're accessing, which is good for your privacy. But you make it sound like they've sacrificed something in doing that.
If google had done this, everybody would be up in arms about how google was further overreaching in their goal to gain complete control of the internet and are preventing poor little mom and pop websites from being able to meet their marketing goals.
Just because you believe the FB/G nonsense that the internet is only possible by gross violations of user privacy doesn't mean everyone else buys into it.
Google provides a similar thing as an OAuth/OpenID provider. (except they track all that stuff and share the email with the site/app).
Personally, I'm fine with Apple having that kind of info as I generally trust them and also that my main concern is the same with your frustration of my email ending up in yet another leak seemingly frequently.
...up until Apple decides to change their leadership, or their business model, or the mobile market implodes and they start looking for new revenue streams, or their relationship with the US government changes, or ...
I get that as a practical matter we are forced to trust somebody somewhere eventually, but at best we should be saying that "Apple doesn't seem motivated to abuse this information for now."
The problem with burner address servers:
* They don't protect against fake addresses (which is why many services actually block them)
* They are much harder for regular users to use
* They're annoying to use, and fundamentally require providing your email address to yet another third party
Apple Sign-In clearly make the use of cloaking addresses much easier.
Again this still only applies to "social" logins, you're welcome to have your own login system.
There's obvious pros and cons to the developer owning that communication channel, or to a middleman owning that communication channel.
What Apple is doing here is using their total control of the application distribution channel on iOS to hold apps hostage to add an option to sell users on handing Apple control, or possibly reduce their growth by forcing them to remove the other login options.
It's mildly pro-consumer, but I think it's anywhere from mildly to very developer hostile. I'm not positive it will have a sustained effect, as developers may do what they did with Facebook and detect the proxied email and ask for the real one in its place.
And Apple may very well outlaw this practice.
I agree, this is some win for privacy against random rogue apps, but I don't see how Apple would secede anything.
Could you elaborate?
They obviously have a mapping of cloak address -> real address, but there's no requirement for them to have any record of which apps got which addresses.
This is not a new thing.
For example, when the iPad launched and digital versions of magazines began to be available, Apple allowed a subscriber to provide the magazine publishing house with their email address, but also required that they be allowed to refuse to provide it.
The new thing here is to give the user a way to shut off abusive spamming of an email address they have chosen to provide.
When a company blocks Mailinator, they're giving up a pretty small number of users -- those who know about Mailinator, use it, and refuse to sign up for a service that blocks it. Since Sign In with Apple is required for any iOS app that supports 3rd-party login, any company (with an app, which is mostly what this is all about anyway) that decides to block this new type of authentication will be forced to either give up all 3rd-party login options (costing them existing users who sign in this way and increasing the cost to acquire new ones), or give up their iOS app -- in either case, this probably means giving up a large number of users.
I’d like to see these:
1. Restricted to people who have associated a physical Apple device, and
2. No ability for the user to re-scramble the anonymous identifier once it is assigned to a service.
If these two criteria are met, I won’t consider it a throwaway email service.
Which would be even more reason not to sign in at all. That said I'm sure that whenever the official guidelines come out there will be something explicit about not doing so (although of course that would only apply to apps)
Nitpick: seceding = leaving a group, ceding = giving up something.
Thank you very much :p
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Again, from a customer angle I’m not 100% sold on this. I don’t want to miss an email because Apple servers are down, and if Apple decides to kill an app I don’t like, I also want the ability to disagree. Separately, I want something that wouldn’t be a pain to use on non-Apple devices.
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I do like the layer of indirection, but I have to imagine that someday the shareholders are going to ask "why not target ads like Google is doing" and they're not going to have a good answer.
They've also explicitly stated that they will not record any information about interaction with a service.
Based on Apple's general approach to data security, I suspect that there is no "company A got alias address Y" table. In principle all that they need is a table of alias->real. On the other hand maybe it would be useful to have such a table in the case a site gets compromised/starts selling information?
But they have stated explicitly in a public video that they will not record interactions or emails you send, so I'm sure it would be lawsuit city if the reneged on that.
I can't even imagine what would happen if Google did the same thing with Google Sign In and the Play store.
Disclaimer: I work for Google, not on anything related, and am speaking for myself (as always).
But lets look at it another way:
* I buy an app on the App Store, and then find out that I have to use FB or Google login.
* So to use the app I have purchased I am required to allow the app and/or Google or Facebook to further their abuse of my privacy.
Alternatively:
* An App is shown as "Free"
* I install it, and it require FB or Google sign in.
That isn't free. Again, signing up for abuse of my privacy is not free.
Surely the logical extension of this is that no app with ads should be marked as "free". Your attention is not free. Right?
Additionally, if the app only has FB or Google login and you don't use either, you can just not use the app
Free in the colloquial sense means "no money required", otherwise nothing is free since there is always some cost, if not an opportunity cost. What are you going to do, complain that an app required bandwidth to download?
> I can't even imagine what would happen if Google did the same thing with Google Sign In and the Play store.
If Apple made its money by mining its users' data, there would be a big uproar about this announcement, too. But Apple made it very clear that they will not be doing that with this data, and is moving more and more towards establishing itself as the privacy-focused alternative to Google... So this is by and large (and obviously there are many people with reservations, whether about Apple forcing developers' hands, or about trusting a big company in general) being seen as more of a Good Thing.
If Google were to implement the same requirement, any cross platform app with Apple's login would also now have a Log in with Google button, making sure that Apple won't be getting any Oauth monopoly any time soon just to keep them in check.
Apple has just leveraged their position as the iOS gatekeepers in order to obtain a huge marketshare of the SSO market.
I'm not an Apple user, but I would expect Apple to provide and guarantee that you can log in any app with your Apple login. Seems fair to me.
Also, I'm pretty confident that Google offering a privacy-oriented SSO on Google Play would be appreciated by everyone. Privacy on Android is such a joke : any app can freely read the accounts present on your phone, they don't even need you to sign in to identify you
I'm even more thrilled to see, that according to the Okta article linked in another thread by simonw [1], Apple uses OAuth and OpenID Connect for this, and not some home-grown protocol.
Great news all-round.
[1] https://developer.okta.com/blog/2019/06/04/what-the-heck-is-...
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It is also available on the web (including on Android and Windows)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20128029
Specifically:
It verifies the "realness" of the account, so everyone claiming that they need user's real email address for "fraud detection" can't argue that nonsense anymore. We all know that argument was just a cover for "we want to be able to spam our users with impunity", but this specifically addresses that argument just to be sure.
Run a site that allows/displays user submitted content and you'll likely change your mind about that being a cover or bogus argument.
And very few apps (at least of what I use) that have 3rd party auth have features where user content is displayed to others.
You get an email address you can contact them through.
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Also, I think most users anyway use a secondary or "throwaway" mail account to sign up to various websites that are not critical to them. This problem is largely already solved.
If you watch the presentation or read the transcript, they explicitly say that they're doing fraud/spam account prevention.
Do you really think you're doing more fraud/spam detection and prevention work than apple?
1. If my app is both in IOS and Android, and maybe Windows, would this work across platforms? The answer looks like no... Apple's definition of "multiplatform" means iOS, TVOS and WatchOS, and some javascript for the web. (given Apple's poor track record for anything web-based, good luck with that). If you want to port your app to Android or Native Windows, good luck with that. Your users are locked in.
2. If I have an app that is a competitor to Facebook, and FB decides to cut me off, I can use the existing emails so the user are not locked out the app (i.e. they will be sent an email with a link to create a password and keep their account).
This looks impossible with the apple sign in. Basically if Apple decides to cut you off, your user's accounts are lost.
No matter what some folks believe that 'everything social is evil', some applications providers provide the social log-in just because the user that prefer using them over entering the same information over and over. Instead of entering email, authorizing/verifying it, and having a profile picture, a social log-in provides those for you.
As I am building an app that has the social login (Google and Facebook) as well as simple email sign in, this feels like an additional burden that I'd prefer not to (for the two main reasons above).
Feels very anti-competitive.... Apple should provide the log-in as an option, and compete with its own merits, but not force app makers to use it.
Also, I think apple is being totally evil now: By forcing companies like Spotify and other competitors to use their log in, they are creating an very intrusive/invasive way to monitor their competitors.
Eg. Netflix and Spotify and a myriad of other Apple's direct competitor are forced to be locked in the Apple's vendor sign in trap.
edit: Also it looks like it's just OAuth and you could implement it directly
If Mozilla or name your blessed organization of choice came up with this system, most of them would be fine with it.
But because it’s Apple, there’s all this consternation about it.
Apple’s huge advantage: their revenue comes from devices and services, not advertising.
It would be different if this was a one-off but they’ve been implementing privacy features for several years…
I think people would have the same issue if Google required ‘Sign In With Google’ in play store apps that have Facebook login, and returned throwaway / proxies email addresses.
Yet this one is not a pro-privacy feature, it's an "apple owns your privacy" feature. Apple will control your account access and even be able to read your emails. Sure you trust them, but in the future they 'll use it to push their own ecosystem (like apple payments) to developers. We 've had single sign-ons for too many years to know that any ecosystem lock-in is a bad thing. As bad as email sounds, it's still the free-est , most decentralized login provider available.
> If Mozilla or name your blessed organization of choice came up with this system, most of them would be fine with it.
Mozilla came up with Persona, which would be great if they pushed it further and perhapps provided an anonymous email relayer like this instead of being based on existing email providers. With Mozilla the big advantage is that your account is not tied to any other service, real name, credit card etc. I wouldn't use Apple Login to sign up to a porn site, despite the high standards of apple's security.