Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 515 posts

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#311

Post by burnished »

echelon wrote: post #109
CheezeIt wrote: post #47

Apple shouldn’t be interfering with other businesses and their users like this. It’s sad to see people here celebrating their inability to run unapproved software.

Call and email your representatives like I do. You're not going to find support in a forum with 60+% Apple users. A lot of these people work for or have stock in this company. They don't see how this is a roadblock to competition and that this device is now in the critical path of 50+% of commerce. (Maybe they'll care more when they have to compete.)

>>A lot of these people work for or have stock in this company

You wouldn't happen to work or have stock in a company negatively impacted by this change?

I don't have any interest in apple and don't use their products, but I'm really struggling to see how preventing the scummy strat of making sign up easy but deletion/deactivation difficult is some how a 'roadblock to competition'.

You're gonna have to make a much stronger argument to get any traction.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#312

Post by y2bd »

paxys wrote: post #25

Wonder if this applies to Apple itself. There is no way to delete your Apple ID (or other info Apple knows about you) using the device.

Apple also says apps aren't allowed to use notifications for advertising (3.1.7 Advertising) but routinely uses notifications to advertise Apple Music, Apple TV, and their other various Apple+ services ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#313

Post by Aperocky »

tshaddox wrote: post #62
madars wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard you can change your address to California, which then gives the option to cancel online (due to state law). It is absolutely ridiculous that NYT will happily take your card info online, but require you to be on hold to speak with their "customer care" to cancel. Maybe it is time to use virtual CC's a la privacy.com.

In California the New York Times still requires you to chat with a customer support person on their website. You still have to wait in queue, then wait for the person (or maybe it's a bot at this point) paste in several attempts at retaining your subscription. The law needs to be that you can cancel all recurring payments through a standard interface. It's ludicrous that my online banking account doesn't just show me…

Can you dispute? Just say that NYT cannot be unsubscribed from because of unresponsiveness and blacklist it from ever charging the card number.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#314

Post by floatingatoll »

oauea wrote: post #263
floatingatoll wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you’d like to work at Apple and help them improve their guidelines process. They don’t offer what-if examples, and they note that it’s by design that the guidelines are not detailed to the level you’re asking, so that they have the flexibility to make judgment calls and prevent rules-lawyering problems that crop up with the more detailed approach you seek. 1. Auth tenant. Common sense says that if the…

The sad truth is you're at the whims of some random app store reviewer and it depends completely on their mood of the day. It's honestly insane and impossible to work with. One day everything is fine, the next they have a list of issues that you are forced to spend dozens of developer hours on, just so apple will grace you with the permission to push an unrelated localization fix.

Correct, you are at the whims of Apple when you attempt to publish to their app store.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#315

Post by almostdigital »

xg15 wrote: post #212
nightski wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to break it to you but banks are not deleting your account immediately when you close it. They legally can't.

Your point being? Not deleting data for legal reasons is still better than the data being physically impossible to delete.

A large meteor would delete it just fine.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#316

Post by tylersmith »

jeroenhd wrote: post #40
anarchogeek wrote: post #27

What about inmutable systems? My app (using scuttlebutt) creates an 'account' but it's located as crypto keys only within the app and apple keychain. So far the apple reviewers refused to believe that it works like. It's open source, they've got the code... but still.... Same is true for anything crypto. The account as it were exists on many devices, but it's not something you as the app creator can manage. I think a…

This is why using the blockchain got user data is such a stupid idea. The immutability makes it impossible to redact or remove information, even if that information is encrypted. The same is true foor P2P services where there is no central accounting system. Deleting the account shouldn't be a problem if all the "account" info is stored on the device itself, so if your reviewers aren't completely incompetent I don't…

The best way to do user data on-chain is to commit to hashes of the data over time as it changes, and have users provide the data for the latest hash when it's needed.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#317

Post by floatingatoll »

oauea wrote: post #253
floatingatoll wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple considers 3 months their standard level of advance notice, with WWDC serving as your warning and the release of iOS in September as the go-live date. However, in this case, they have ended up giving you 6 months and a courtesy reminder. If you aren’t interested in maintaining your app annually, don’t publish apps on Apple’s store. Whether or not their level of notice is enough, they’ve been consistent for years…

Yet another developer-hostile apple policy. Amazing. You have to be crazy to stake your company on apple's goodwill at this point.

I feel like they should be a lot more up front and plainly spoken about the maintenance burden of publishing on the app store.

But I don't think it's particularly hostile. I think it's just that their focus on user experience requires them to accept the punishing annual cycle for developers.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#318

Post by floatingatoll »

grishka wrote: post #310
floatingatoll wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your app is incompatible with the Apple App Store. There’s a lot of arguments that people will make about whether this is justified or not, but from a plain rules standpoint, that’s not a permissible data management strategy if you want to publish an iOS app through Apple’s store.

What if you're making an unofficial, unaffiliated app for someone else's service, and their API/protocol doesn't support deleting accounts?

If your app implements account creation, then it will likely be taken down unless either your app removes create-account support or the API and your app implement delete-account support, as a user would reasonably expect that you're able to delete the accounts that you create.

If you do not implement account creation, then you're unlikely to be held responsible for account deletion, as a user would reasonably understand that your app is not responsible for creation or deletion of accounts.

EDIT: Elsethread, someone asked "What if I create accounts on the blockchain?", and since it's possible you'll come around to that idea next — the app would have to interact directly with the blockchain, so you'd probably get rejected for a whole array of reasons, such as but not limited to that you're storing account data on the blockchain. And I wouldn't envy you trying to explain why you shouldn't be continuously fined for GDPR violation in the EU, either.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#319

Post by not_kurt_godel »

xxs wrote: post #257
nightski wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to break it to you but banks are not deleting your account immediately when you close it. They legally can't.

Yes, pretty much anything that has anything to do with anti-money laundering takes 7 to 10 years to even consider forgetting your account.

Ok, and? 7-10 years isn't forever, or at least certainly not long enough to negate GP's point about blockchain immutability being undesirable as far as account deletion is concerned.

Re: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

#320

Post by ziml77 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #40
anarchogeek wrote: post #27

What about inmutable systems? My app (using scuttlebutt) creates an 'account' but it's located as crypto keys only within the app and apple keychain. So far the apple reviewers refused to believe that it works like. It's open source, they've got the code... but still.... Same is true for anything crypto. The account as it were exists on many devices, but it's not something you as the app creator can manage. I think a…

This is why using the blockchain got user data is such a stupid idea. The immutability makes it impossible to redact or remove information, even if that information is encrypted. The same is true foor P2P services where there is no central accounting system. Deleting the account shouldn't be a problem if all the "account" info is stored on the device itself, so if your reviewers aren't completely incompetent I don't…

And this is a major reason I'm personally wary about a lot of ideas around putting stuff onto a public blockchain. Once it's there it's never going away.

Even just transaction info on a public blockchain is odd to me. It's possible to remain anonymous, but all it takes is one slip-up and then anyone can perform blockchain analysis to trace all sorts of stuff back to me.

Post reply on HN