Apple Sign In • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Sign In

#261

Post by vilhelmen » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #115

mjlee wrote: post #3

Disposable, anonymous email forwarding is a massive step forward for privacy. I know we've all been doing it for a while, but this on a consumer level is fantastic.

In case anyone needs something similar today: Outlook already allows you to create ephemeral top-level aliases, i.e. XXXX@outlook.com. You can use this to sign up, then delete the alias. It can't be traced back to your account and nobody blocks @outlook.com. https://account.live.com/names/Manage (not to take away from this announcement at all; just to provide some context. it's an often overlooked feature which peopl…

I'm so mad I missed the window where you were supposedly able to merge email accounts. If I want to merge existing separate accounts now I have to terminate the old account, wait like a 9 months/a year(??) for it to expire and be purged, and then add it as an alias, assuming MS doesn't hold the expired account name >:C

Re: Apple Sign In

#262

Post by saltminer » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #54

dyarosla wrote: post #19

Can’t services just disallow/block this address? Fun thing is, Apple themselves block name+addon@gmail.com addresses when using their dev console. You can bet that some companies will disallow Apple’s signature private passwords similarly if they can, in the name of ‘security’ or what have you. Or am I being too cynical? Feel free to CMV. EDIT: best response addressing this seems to be ‘The addresses are only generat…

But in return for that, the services that choose to employ this will get a soft guarantee that the person signing up is unique/real. Its a way to get real-name/real-id with some amount of privacy.

Apple IDs cannot guarantee a real or unique user - users can have multiple accounts (some users will create a second account by mistake, others have a separate work account, etc), users can share accounts (especially ones tied to generic email addresses), and there are people selling app store reviews, so some bad actors definitely have a lot of accounts.

Re: Apple Sign In

#263

Post by bound008 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

Free disposable forwarding email addresses that you can turn off. Built on the startup bus years ago: http://boun.cr

MailGun ( a YC company ) was providing their API for free, until another company came along and offered to take over the project. All of the code and design was built on a bus from CA to ATX.

(and one of the team members met their co-founder on that (StartupBus) trip and went through YC. I believe they are a unicorn now)

Re: Apple Sign In

#264

Post by wiredfool » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #196

Yetanfou wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about 'neither of them'? Trusting Google with your data is like trusting a fox with guarding your hen house, trusting Apple with your data is trusting a fox which claims it turned vegetarian. Run your own mail server and you'll have all the addresses you care to use, using any scheme you might think off. I've been doing this for decades now and it just plain works. A day or so to get the thing setup, 8 hours of m…

Where do you host your mail server? I've been running my own for years on Rackspace, and it works great, except they recently started adding on a $5/month support fee that old accounts like mine had been grandfathered out of. With that, and other price increases over the years, it now costs about twice what I originally paid. I originally picked Rackspace over AWS because Rackspace's cheapest acceptable option was ab…

I’m in exactly your position, and I wound up going with hetzner. Been happy with them so far, and they’re far cheaper than Rackspace.

Re: Apple Sign In

#265

Post by trazire » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #256

throwayEngineer wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes

What a coincidence, Google works for those people, too!

As does every company ever, as is their fiduciary duty.

Re: Apple Sign In

#266

Post by kukabynd » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

mjlee wrote: post #3

Disposable, anonymous email forwarding is a massive step forward for privacy. I know we've all been doing it for a while, but this on a consumer level is fantastic.

Agreed, I think it’s the most important part of the demo today.

Re: Apple Sign In

#267

Post by nothrabannosir » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

maxheadroom wrote: post #228

nothrabannosir wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone needs something similar today: Outlook already allows you to create ephemeral top-level aliases, i.e. XXXX@outlook.com. You can use this to sign up, then delete the alias. It can't be traced back to your account and nobody blocks @outlook.com. https://account.live.com/names/Manage (not to take away from this announcement at all; just to provide some context. it's an often overlooked feature which peopl…

> It can't be traced back to your account... I'm sure there's logging or other AD property (think something like sidHistory[0]) to keep track of this. Companies don't like being liable for not being able to provide data under order[s]. [0] - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/ADSchema/a-...

Sorry I meant by the service you're signing into, any of their 3rd party trackers, or in case of a data breach. This sets it apart from e.g. gmail's username+servicename@gmail.com, or a wildcard on a private domainname which only you ever use.

Re: Apple Sign In

#268

Post by tschwimmer » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

This is really good for consumers, but I'm afraid that many websites simply won't bother to implement this. Apple just doesn't have the unique marketshare that Google and FB have. The set of users that would use such a thing is the union of privacy focused users and users with an Apple ID and not a Facebook or Google account. This set is heavily overrepresented on HN but is relatively small overall.

If I run foo dot com, is that set of users attractive enough to me that I'll spend the engineering time to implement this? I can't think of many instances where it would be.

Re: Apple Sign In

#269

Post by throwayEngineer » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #256

throwayEngineer wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes

What a coincidence, Google works for those people, too!

But Google cannot get away with screwing both customers and developers.

Apple doesn't seem to provide competition in the tech space that is pro consumer or pro developer.

Apple is pushing profit more than anyone else in tech.

Re: Apple Sign In

#270

Post by bichiliad » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #32

dyarosla wrote: post #19

Can’t services just disallow/block this address? Fun thing is, Apple themselves block name+addon@gmail.com addresses when using their dev console. You can bet that some companies will disallow Apple’s signature private passwords similarly if they can, in the name of ‘security’ or what have you. Or am I being too cynical? Feel free to CMV. EDIT: best response addressing this seems to be ‘The addresses are only generat…

Presumably such services won't implement Sign In With Apple in the first place. People will accept it because they want the sheer quantity of users Apple provides. The useful thing about Apple is that they can force people to do things they don't particularly want to do, like accept anonymous e-mail addresses or stop using Flash. (unfortunately this is also the bad thing about Apple)

One other thing that seems powerful is that users that use Sign In With Apple have some guarantee of quality; with Apple using FaceId to authenticate, there's some amount of guarantee that you're not a bot.