At WWDC 2019, Apple made both software and hardware announcements. One feature they unveiled aimed at privacy was the company’s single sign-on(SSO). This feature is similar to how you log in with social media sites Facebook, Twitter and Google buttons on websites and third-party apps.
Here’s how it works
“Sign in with Apple” allows you to sign in without providing any personal information like your email addresses to third parties. When you opt in, the service will create for you a unique randomly generated email address that hides your actual email associated with your Apple ID.
Apple will provide an option to provide anonymized throwaway email addresses to users for apps
Adtech isn't gonna like this lol pic.twitter.com/7oxRgkbfMq
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 3, 2019
This means that developers will be prevented from sharing or selling users contact info, avoid being targetted with marketing as with Facebook Custom Audience ads.
Thinking further: "sign in with Apple" and email-relay breaks all sorts of downstream dynamics in adtech. For example – this could really change how lookalike audiences work.
— Sriram Krishnan – sriramk.eth (@sriramk) June 3, 2019
This new sign on feature kills two birds with one stone as it will not only limit third-party tracking on Apple devices but will also force developers to participate.
Apple updated the App Store review guidelines to add that apps that usee other companies single sign-on features like Google or Facebook will be required to adopt the “Sign in with Apple” feature and provide it as an alternative.
Sign In with Apple will be available for beta testing this summer. It will be required as an option for users in apps that support third-party sign-in when it is commercially available later this year.
App developers will also have to switch on Sender Policy Framework(SPF) for their outgoing email to prevent others from spoofing their emails before they can use sign-in.
This feature of cloaking your actual email addresses and providing an alternative isn’t totally new, Mozilla was already working on their own version aptly named Mozilla Persona. This thread explains it all.
1/ On the occasion of the launch of @apple's "Sign in with Apple," allow me to indulge in a walk down a memory lane called @MozillaPersona — the project I loved and led at Mozilla 6-8 years ago, the project that broke my heart. This is my take, I'm sure it's incomplete.
— Ben Adida (@benadida) June 4, 2019
Sadly it never picked on.
23/ We started thinking about native app support. We started building a password manager. But by then it was getting too late. Our executive support was running out. And we hadn't gotten a win in a while. A couple executive departures and reorgs sealed the project's fate.
— Ben Adida (@benadida) June 4, 2019
25/ or, if you're Apple, and you can just tell developers what they can or cannot do on the most important computing platform ever *and* you've got a metric ton of users, then yeah you can probably make a privacy-first identity system happen.
[Cheers to my Persona teammates.]
— Ben Adida (@benadida) June 4, 2019
The new feature has gotten a lot of praise
https://twitter.com/panzer/status/1135602729739407360
Sign in with Apple could be the biggest thing Apple launches this year #WWDC2019
— Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) June 3, 2019
Critics are worried too
Alot of critics are worried that Apple is going to take a walled garden approach to log-ins and this will create further vendor lockins. Also forcing developers to adopt this privacy feature highlights the power that the App Store has which is exactly why US Senator Elizabeth Warren calls it a monopolistic approach and that Apple should either run the platform or they play in the store.
“Either Apple run the platform or they play in the store. They don’t get to do both at the same time.”
Things got awkward after the event ended as the Department of Justice announced it will begin investigating Apple for antitrust violations.
The Department of Justice will certainly be investigating Apple for its [consults notes] privacy-enhancing monopoly https://t.co/kl1MLqI1pR
— Glenn Fleishman @[email protected] (@GlennF) June 3, 2019
“Sign in with Apple” beta testing opens later this year. The question left to answer is if developers will get on board with this forced on approach and give up the little control they had over to Apple who already write the rules for them.
Wow. Apple sign-in support is mandatory? https://t.co/qen34RLGOW pic.twitter.com/gBhStE6HVN
— Ben Sandofsky (@sandofsky) June 3, 2019
It’s possible that this requirement might not bode well by some companies and only time will tell how this feature plays out.
