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Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

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Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not GP but like, ok, why can’t that be sent from any other email (user-provided or otherwise)?

My guess is that it's being send to the email the user registered with. And requiring them to provide a separate email from the one they registered with completely defeats the purpose of obfuscating the email in the first place, so I think it'd be unreasonable to ask a developer to implement a whole second place to put an email just to work around Apple denying access to that information in the first place. At the ve…

If I understand the model of the hypothetical app referenced above, they send email containing confidential (already, this seems problematic, but let's ignore that) "trip" information to some email address. Within that structure, then sure it's problematic to have to require two different email addresses. Except, you don't have to do that. Don't require an email address to start using the app. Let users enter whatever confidential trip info they want, keep a reference to the resulting DB records in a cookie, and only require an email address when the user wants to, uhh, get an email sent.

Having typed the foregoing, I realize now I'm basically just saying "don't use any third-party sign-in, including SIWA". Maybe it's fine that the ecosystem doesn't always cater to apps of questionable utility...

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not GP but like, ok, why can’t that be sent from any other email (user-provided or otherwise)?

My guess is that it's being send to the email the user registered with. And requiring them to provide a separate email from the one they registered with completely defeats the purpose of obfuscating the email in the first place, so I think it'd be unreasonable to ask a developer to implement a whole second place to put an email just to work around Apple denying access to that information in the first place. At the ve…

> My guess is that it's being send to the email the user registered with

I assumed otherwise because they specifically wrote "sharing". Still, I'm not sure agree with:

> requiring them to provide a separate email from the one they registered with completely defeats the purpose of obfuscating the email in the first place

I can't use most apps without providing an email, whether they need it or not. That's a much worse situation than not being able to use some features without providing one (which still assumes me having no access to or knowledge of my own iCloud email).

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#454
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the service provider does not have your email address, they are severely hampered with regards to customer support. No, they're not. They're just relying on email as a user verification methods as it's the easiest approach. Other methods are possible.

Verification is only one part of the problem. The other is communication. If I can't contact my customers, how do I support them (e.g. report a security problem)? If my customers can't communicate which account is theirs, how do we help solve problems? Email addresses and/or phone numbers make this a lot easier.

tl;dr email isn't needed, people are just used to it.

It's a fair point, and perhaps its one that the likes of Apple SignIn should solve. On the one hand, even Microsoft and Apple send me heaps of spam under the guise of "communication" and I don't want them to have my email address if I can avoid it. The OP says they have trouble with support, but they can (and it sounds like do) tell people to just check their Apple email. Most places that I contact for support require me to put in a contact email for that ticket because people use throw-aways anyway. As for security problems, well I'm glad you're one of the few companies to actually disclose security breaches. But if the information on the website is actually sensitive, then there should be additional checks to begin with. If it's CC info, you should contact the CC company, there should be 2FA, there should be more than an SSO service, which already prevents the biggest and worst security breach of leaked passwords. In short, I doubt the need to contact a customer unsolicited is so great, common, or difficult as to require that a user disclose a non-obfuscated email address, which people already commonly have throwaways for. And the reason they have throwaway accounts is because 99% of the time, when I give someone a ...@spamgourmet account or whatever, that address gets spammed, even though I told them not to put them on the mailing list (because they share the email with third parties, or just plain ignore it).

The tradeoff is a bad one. I do not have sensitive information on Reddit that is not public. A private investigator could probably deduce who I am by looking at my Reddit posts, figuring out where I live, where I went to school, what family members I have, what my job is. They don't need to contact me urgently about a security breach. You can say when I sign on and lock my account until I acknowledge it, but it's not urgent. Even a website that might need sensitive information and, for some reason, doesn't want to require I actually verify my identity for real to upload that sensitive information, that doesn't mean I'm using the website in that capacity and should give up identifying information in case I need to give up identifying information later and you need to contact me that my information has been leaked.

The perspective is worth thinking about, but I'm unmoved that it amounts to pushing the needle to "you need my real, primary email address." I believe the tiny, tiny minority of companies that actually need that and shouldn't just rejigger their system to better security and privacy practices to start with can find reasonable workarounds or resort to mild inconveniences like requiring a callback number on support.

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once I have bought something from Walmart I can use it as I wish. Not if it's a movie, music, or video game. I.e. anything with digital content.

Providers of digital content seem to be absolutely all over the place with this stuff Comcast of all people offers the ability to buy movies on demand. Not just rent but outright purchase. If you leave Comcast as a customer, you can have every purchase mailed to you as either a DVD (SD) or Blu Ray (HD) purchase Steam has provisions in place that if its service ever gets terminated to allow users to continue to use ga…

You don’t own any of these things, you own a license to the content and the physical disc.

It’s completely different to owning something.

Steams provisions are helpful in practice but ultimately meaningless because you don’t own any of the actual games, you merely have a license to run the code under their terms.

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > If a customer contacts us asking for support, and we need to look up something in their account, typically we can just ask them for the email address on their account. But with “Hide My Email” that wouldn’t be easily possible, because the customer would have to figure out the privaterelay.appleid.com email address used for their account. > Furthermore, if there are platforms where AnyList doesn’t…

For the first point, the app can explicitly tell the user what their login is, or otherwise assign some unique identifier the user can use when contacting support. The app can also offer to contact support for them, which can pre-fill the user identifier. For the second, that’s entirely the user’s choice. Your app can also allow them to associate a new email address for this purpose (which strikes me as exactly what…

> For the first point, the app can explicitly tell the user what their login is, or otherwise assign some unique identifier the user can use when contacting support. The app can also offer to contact support for them, which can pre-fill the user identifier.

as thomaslord said, this is an enormous overhead, where a lot can go wrong.

> For the second, that’s entirely the user’s choice. Your app can also allow them to associate a new email address for this purpose (which strikes me as exactly what you actually want since the real unstated motivation here is getting the user’s email).

Even more overhead, and more data to manage.

> For the third, don’t make me type in someone’s email. The exact same issue as described happens if they have multiple email addresses too. Just let me use my OS’s sharing mechanism to send a special link that they can open to establish the sharing connection. An invite to share, as it were. Not only does that solve the problem, it’s significantly more user-friendly.

For native only apps, this would also add an additional overhead, as you need to develop a server to handle this.

The point is simple: if you want to protect your email address, that's on you. I personally use a different email address for each service, because it's important for me. But I don't expect everyone will bend over backwards to accommodate me, and neither should you.

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it user hostile? Maybe you're misunderstanding what it is but for signup it's just a wizard and for login it sends you a link. Pretty seamless experience. To signup you click a deeplink button into the chatbot follow some simple steps and then get logged into the app. Otherwise the notifications work just the same as you're used to except it leverages the chat platform instead of the developer hostile native p…

Sorry, hostile was probably too much. I understand after having read the explanation. However, my experience with chatbots is that they are unreliable, unhelpful and obnoxious, and I tend to go out of my way to avoid using them. I don't think a conversation is a right model for this. I also don't think it looks good when a website or app wants me to install a messaging app to create an account (though of course some…

Well I also have no intention of slurping PII beyond the bare minimum. I understand there may be some added friction for some users but as a one man show I can’t deal with the maintenance necessary to be on the mobile app stores. I look at it as a constraint to encourage creativity. As I develop ideas I am exploring more and more how to make the ux and the approach gel in a seamlessly natural manner. I guess I’ll find out if I’m successful after launch...

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#458
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferred to Apple more than the user.

Apple operates on behalf of the user. Apple saw users with throwaway/burner email addresses and said why not make this easier for everyone?

As long as they don't try to switch

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#459
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder, though, whether the requirement for Sign in with Apple is coming in a few years. As in, if you allow users to sign in with email/password, you must allow users to sign in with "sign in with apple". It might be more subtle, like suggested auto-fill to create a new account.

That sounds like a bridge too far even by Apple standards. I can get on board with "if you support Facebook, you have to support us as well", but not allowing any kind of escape hatch feels particularly scummy. At some point it's none of Apple's business how people sign up with my service.

I don't understand how "if you support Facebook, you have to support us as well" is ok. Only by holding the relationship between the user and the developer "hostage".

Re: Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

#460
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but I dont want to be found. That's why I don't share my email. If I want to share with someone, I don't want the use that app to establish a link between us, because I don't want the app to know anything about us except what it must to do it's job. "Go find some setting and figure it out" is a UX fail. When I share eg a Dropbox link or a Google Photos link, you can get to it whether you have an established acco…

I get your use case. But in this case the company is someone who claims to be "The best way to create and share a grocery shopping list and organize your recipes." Sharing is part of the deal with them and a sign in process that from the start complicates it is understandably a no go / introduces all sorts of complications that they detail in the article.

I get that sharing is a core thing for this app. I just don't think sharing should have anything to do with my identity. It can be a hash that is shared across any communications platform (even by meat-space, vocally!).

If the goal for the app is for itself to be a tool for identity management, then knowing my email is especially not needed...after all, all identity context is already in the app!

UX should center around ease of sharing some hash value across some other medium, not "searching by identity."

I do honestly empathize with the app creators. But anybody choosing an obscuring email by definition does not want to be identified by email.

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