Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

https://blog.anylist.com/2020/06/sign-in-with-apple/

by dirtae • 6 years ago

1069 469 6 years ago

blog.anylist.com

tboyd47• 6 years ago

There's a subtle sense of exuberance shining through in this article that makes it a gratifying read, even if you've never heard of the company before. Kudos to them for their decision not to bow to Apple's demands. Please tell us how it goes!

dave5104• 6 years ago

Well, they're also getting rid of the "Log in with Facebook" option too, which is arguably giving into the demands of Apple.

ogre_codes2• 6 years ago

bow to Apple's demands.

Apple "demanded" companies either add their privacy friendly sign in option, or give up on the data-slurping Facebook google sign-ups. This company gave up FB sign in, which they acknowledge is pretty gross and bloated.

scarface7411• 6 years ago

That works as intended - they took out FB integration.

intellirogue2• 6 years ago

Worth noting that AnyList automatically subscribed me to a marketing list without double opt-in or any kind of consent, which is exactly the kind of behaviour that makes me not want apps to have my real email address.

kergonath5• 6 years ago

And their whining about not getting email addresses is exactly why I would not want to give mine.

mxcrossr• 6 years ago

They mention customer support so many times in that article, but it's a grocery list app! When is the last time I asked for support for the sticky note attached to my refrigerator? I don't doubt that there are indeed customers who need support from time to time, but surely it's a small minority.

These seem to just be contrived arguments to protect their customer data selling bottom line.

temporarysdwvit2• 6 years ago

Yep, my feelings exactly after reading. All this whining happens only when your business is very dependent on specific information that gets taken from you.

crazyricardo• 6 years ago

Definitely picked up the same intentions from the post.

Seems out of place to complain about not having email addresses for "support" reasons.

If they truly cannot help users without asking for their email address, maybe they should not have users (login) then.

ativzzz• 6 years ago

Having any kind of subscription payment massively increases complexity and support requirements in your app.

nuker• 6 years ago

automatically subscribed me to a marketing list

Side note, disabling 'load remote content' in email client stops all spam in a while, they think emails are not read.

judge20202• 6 years ago

Using Gmail at all seems to have the same effect as well since they pre-load and proxy almost all email content. Only when you use alternative mail clients might they see the images/remote content being loaded from a non-google IP.

nashashmi• 6 years ago

This.

The blog post was long and winded. And it brought up some very desperate arguments, like the bug bounty offered to hackers when they report security vulnerabilities.

They want people's email addresses, period.

They say that no email breaks the sharing feature. True. But that's something that can be offered later when someone actually does share something with you. They say that the emails will go to the a seldom checked account. True. But users can change email addresses. They say it breaks support service for looking up accounts without email addresses. Again true. But what's another way of looking up accounts? Username. What is another? Apple ID.

They are email network harvesters. Plain and simple. And this is their business model.

Smoosh3• 6 years ago

The article says "When you provide us with your email address, it is never sold, shared, or used to invade your privacy." So, one of you is lying. I don't have the means to determine who, but I don't see what your motivation for lying would be, but can see what theirs may be.

And to extend that, if they are a spammy company, that would be exactly why they would be complaining about SIWAI.

intellirogue2• 6 years ago

It wasn't sold or shared, the emails came from them. But they were pure marketing, not transactional, and I certainly didn't agree to it or want it.

mafriese• 6 years ago

That's exactly what I'm thinking! Further I can't find the EULA of the app on the internet - maybe I'll find it later. But I could bet that they sell the data for marketing purposes. And I could also bet that they removed Facebook not because they don't want to use it but because they had to implement Sign in with Apple which would result in the Data being not so valuable because the standard option is to obfuscate the mail address.

djrogers3• 6 years ago

This makes perfect sense from their standpoint - especially since they've had similar problems to what they outline with Facebook sign-in and are now dropping that as well. This is also a win for Apple & end-user privacy, as there's one less app using FB's login feature now.

I think Sign in with Apple is a great step forward even if all it does is eliminate apps that require Facebook and/or Google accounts to log in. I hate that - I actually ran into a feature on my mesh router system that required a FB/G login, which made it a useless feature for me. Fortunately I didn't need it..

muro5• 6 years ago

I've never seen an app that required a FB or Google login. It was always possible to use email+password.

coolspot• 6 years ago

PUBG mobile requires either FB or G+. No option for email+pass.

dheerendra73• 6 years ago

Lucky you! I've run into lot of these apps offering only FB/Google sign in. Or offering mobile number only login. For e.g. I like playing scrabble and Scrabble Go only support FB login so I'm playing only as Guest user for months now.

Mobile number login is even worse! Why do I need to share my mobile number for something where you don't need to have it!

panopticon• 6 years ago

CalTopo[0] doesn't support email+password. It's one of the few websites I use that doesn't support it, but an unfortunate number of mobile apps don't either.

[0] https://caltopo.com/map.html

nikisweeting2• 6 years ago

https://tailscale.com/ requires it, as do many other apps that explicitly "don't want to become identity providers and would rather offload that burden to someone else".

jzzskijj2• 6 years ago

Pokemon Go's account own doesn't work. Even if you manage to create that account, it won't log you in. With Google account it works as expected. I tried to create two Pokemon Go accounts, gave up and created a Pokemon Go only Google account for child's playing. It has worked a few years.

lorenzhs• 6 years ago

Many (> 5-ish?) years ago, Spotify required Facebook login

DaiPlusPlus• 6 years ago

Tinder’s.

Their whole point was that you could be confident the people were real because they were tied to a real Facebook account.

mulmen• 6 years ago

For a time I believe Spotify required a FB login. I recall not using it early on because I couldn’t create an account without connecting it to FB.

godelski• 6 years ago

DnDBeyond only has these types of logins and does not allow email+password

stickfigure4• 6 years ago

For my last two companies (both B2B), I implemented login via Google accounts only. Google login has a number of advantages:

1) Identity is an email address. If I wanted to rip out Google, or Google kicked me off the platform, all I need to do is add passwords and put a "forgot my password" link and my customers continue business as usual.

2) It's not a google-specific email address. You can create Google accounts for any email address.

3) Google login effectively lets other businesses federate their auth system with ours. When they terminate their ex-employee's @example.com account, the employee loses access to their resources at my company.

I don't think you could get away with this for a consumer company; too many people have strong feelings about FB/G/Apple/whatever. But it's fantastic for B2B.

lolsal• 6 years ago

Can you educate me on what you mean by Google accounts only? I thought Google auth was just OAuth.

judge20202• 6 years ago

point 3 is only true for G Suite customers - if someone is on O365 and signs up for Google normally with their company account, they can access that email after their company turns off access to the email unless they also specifically reset the Google password.

scarface7411• 6 years ago

For #2. You can use any email address for an iCloud account also.

BillinghamJ• 6 years ago

#1 is only sort-of true. You can get access to their current email, yes, but the email can change and you should be keying by the Google account ID really.

alerighi• 6 years ago

I mean it can be better for privacy if you think about Google/Facebook loging. But it will prevent adding all third party login services, potentially even ones that are more privacy respecting than Apple.

Also there are cases where a "sign in with <particular provider>" is the only option that makes sense because you really want to integrate with the API of this provider. Take for example a "sign in with GitHub". Or in case of services correlated, take for example Instagram where you obviously can sign up with a Facebook account.

I'm more for letting the developer choose what it prefers for authenticating the user and not having a authentication system that gets imposed by Apple.

thekyle3• 6 years ago

I think Apple does allow apps to limit social sign in options where it makes sense. So for example, an email app could have sign in with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! but not Apple.

czzr• 6 years ago

Buries the lede. They’ve chosen to drop support for Facebook login rather than also support Apple login. So working as intended!

philistine• 6 years ago

Bingo ! This is Apple’s really hard bargain here. Implement us or get rid of all the other garbage sign-in.

lifty• 6 years ago

I love it. With password managers becoming better and by owning your domain, it almost feels like a self-sovereign identity system. It would be great if services would implement better support for browser form auto-fill, and ask the minimum amount of information during signup. That way it would be very little hassle to signup for a service.

kodablah• 6 years ago

And get rid of all the other non-garbage sign-ins too, correct?

guessmyname• 6 years ago

Either the changes are only for the mobile app or they forgot to remove Facebook Sign In in the web [1][2].

[1] https://www.anylist.com/auth/sign-in

[2] https://i.imgur.com/3uC0E9G.png

mrlatinos• 6 years ago

From the OP: "You can expect to see an AnyList app update soon that removes Facebook Login."

mikeryan3• 6 years ago

I'm going to be fascinated to see what this does for conversions. My company built the Neil Young Archives, when doing so we initially launched with Social log ins and at one point Neil decided Facebook and Google were evil and wanted to remove the access. According to our logs a full 2/3s of all users were registering with a social account and we were having great success getting folks to log into a free service (We had 250k sign ups over the first weekend, we thought Auth0 might turn us off as we started on a tier capped around 40k)

We assumed this success would quickly taper off if it wasn't "one click" to sign up with your Google/Faceboook account an talked Neil off the ledge.

GuiA• 6 years ago

But you didn’t try anything to confirm/infirm this hypothesis?

goliatone2• 6 years ago

This escenario seems an clear candidate for A/B testing since I would be conflicted by wanting to provide privacy but understanding it might impact user signups.

Seeing some actual numbers would help me in making that decision.

bluedays• 6 years ago

I just gotta say I both love and hate the Neil Young archives. I hate them because the website is genuinely awful, and a chore to navigate around. However, I love that I have access to a load of stuff I haven't heard before.

At any rate, thanks for the hard work you put into it and I've used this site a lot.

buboard2• 6 years ago

aren't they going to be asking for the real email though?

email remains the best and free-est login identifier. Most people who are not complete internet plebs have a second email for things they dont trust.

djrogers3• 6 years ago

Most people who are not complete internet plebs have a second email for things they dont trust.

The vast majority of people don’t have a second email for things they don’t trust. You’re living in a nerd-bubble, but the rest of the world is on the internet too.

marmada• 6 years ago

It is very unclear to me why removing user options is a good thing. I use sign in with Google/Facebook.

blakesterz• 6 years ago

That was an interesting read. Also, they close with...

"These are both excellent points, and it’s absolutely true that some of the arguments above apply to creating an account via Facebook. That’s why we’re also announcing that we’ll be removing the Facebook Login from AnyList."

dilap2• 6 years ago

Well, that, and also if they don't remove FB login, then the would be required to also implement Sign in with Apple.

They didn't want to implement Sign in with Apple, so they had to remove FB login.

disgruntledphd2• 6 years ago

Which is a pretty anti-competitive move on Apple's part.

They're essentially using their control of the iOS ecosystem to benefit unrelated products.

I seem to remember that those kinds of actions didn't work out well for Microsoft :)

stickfigure4• 6 years ago

If you implement Sign In With Apple, you don't have a relationship with your customers anymore. They're Apple's customers, and Apple can take them away at any time.

djrogers3• 6 years ago

How is that different from FB/Google's login services? The only apps that are required to support Sign in with Apple are those that also support FB/G/etc sign in, so those companies have already chosen a path...

nicky03• 6 years ago

It's not, which is why they are also removing FB login.

stickfigure4• 6 years ago

Google provides an email address. You could replace your Google auth with password auth in an afternoon just by adding a "forgot your password" link.

Facebook auth used to provide an email address, but it's been almost a decade since I last used their APIs so I don't know if that has changed.

Apple's "provide an anonymous email address" inserts them between you and your customer.

danudey2• 6 years ago

It's good that you read Hey's blog post and are repeating it here, but it's not very accurate in this case.

Specifically, if you implement Sign In with Apple, then they are still your customers as much as ever, they just might choose to hide their information from you because they don't trust you, which means that the power in the relationship is transferred to the user instead of the app developer.

nicky03• 6 years ago

Except that in many cases the email address is an obfuscated one controlled by apple, so Apple really is a gatekeeper between the user and the service.

muro5• 6 years ago

Transferred to Apple more than the user.

blendergeek• 6 years ago

"Apple reserves the right to disable Sign in with Apple on a website or app for any reason at any time."

I think GP is absolutely right here. Apple can take the customers at any time for any reason. Apple could ban you from using Sign in with Apple simply because Tim Cook doesn't like what food you eat for breakfast. So, I have to agree with GP that these are Apple's customers at this point.

buboard2• 6 years ago

everyone can create a second email address for precisely this purpose and it will be much more anonymous than anything apple promotes

elicash• 6 years ago

Not every app maker WANTS to store this user data.

Some makers just want things to work and to keep the process as simple as possible for the user.

scarface7411• 6 years ago

I don’t want to have a relationship with every app developer. If you want a relationship with your customers that you control, you are free not to implement any third party sign on and implement your own.

Avamander2• 6 years ago

They will get removed. They don't have the power to fight Apple.

dilap2• 6 years ago

No, they're fine -- if your only login is first-party, you don't need to support Sign in with Apple. (They're taking out FB login to comply.)

muro5• 6 years ago

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.

Avamander2• 6 years ago

For now. I don't have much hope that it will remain like that.

no_wizard5• 6 years ago

A lot of the points they make here are real points, and I think AnyList has validity in their actions.

I also think it’s not as unmanageable as it seems.

Let’s analyze this quote, from the article, as it highlights what I imagine are a big crux of this issue:

with the “Hide My Email” option, your spouse or friends obviously won’t know your privaterelay.appleid.com email address, so when they enter your email address, our systems will believe that you don’t have an account

Since you know this to be the case, why not have an onboard if flow they Sign In with Apple where you have them A) choose a visibility email used for sharing/communication etc. and B) allow for this email to be their backup email? So if they forget their login or whatever you could just transfer the account to this email instead? Of course this should be opt-in but you can always Under good faith explain benefits there in.

It’s more work, but I don’t believe that it’s going to run issue with Apple and provides end users with flexibility.

Of course this may not be worth it, at all. This is just a consideration worth thinking about as an app developer

edit: Of course another alternative here is they just make users aware of what their sharing email is and allow users to optionally change that, if they want to. This most definitely wouldn’t run counter to this I’d think

danudey2• 6 years ago

Since you know this to be the case, why not have an onboard if flow they Sign In with Apple where you have them A) choose a visibility email used for sharing/communication etc. and B) allow for this email to be their backup email? So if they forget their login or whatever you could just transfer the account to this email instead?

I'm fairly certain that detecting someone hiding their e-mail from you and then making them pick a different e-mail goes against the spirit, if not the rules, of Sign In with Apple.

That said, it would be extremely beneficial to pop up a screen saying "Hey, is this the e-mail you want to use for communications?" and let the user decide.

That said, removing third-party sign-in is also a fine solution, almost definitely a better one, and simplifies things immensely for everyone involved (assuming their sign-in form in the app supports saving passwords to the keychain).

ssalka• 6 years ago

making them pick a different e-mail

I think it's more about _letting_ them pick a different email. While I can understand that AnyList (or any other app for that matter) would want to, on occasion, send marketing emails to users, I don't think any app would, in their right mind, _require_ the user to provide a 2nd email address.

But by allowing them to optionally give that 2nd address, they can provide a path forwards with people being able to use Sign In With Apple (of course, that means some users may opt out of marketing emails entirely by refusing to provide a 2nd address).

This does probably go against the spirit of the feature, but if it actually is against Apple's rules to be doing this (anyone know the answer to this?), then it would definitely veer on the side of user hostility on Apple's part, since I would expect many apps to be taking a stance similar to the one taken by AnyList here.

dwaite2• 6 years ago

You don't have to ask for the email at all, if you don't want to. Pinterest apparently does not, so for them SIWA is just an authenticator.

bberenberg• 6 years ago

Do you know if this is allowed within the scope of Sign In with Apple policies? A company I work with is implementing Sign In with Apple and said they can't do this. Not sure if they're right or if this is their weird interpretation.

no_wizard5• 6 years ago

I couldn’t find anything in an admittedly shallow search of the requirements or documentation.

Of course another alternative here is they just make users aware of what their sharing email is and allow users to optionally change that, if they want to.

I think their perfectly valid to do what they’re doing but I also don’t buy into this being an overly complicated logistical hurdle either

elondaits• 6 years ago

In a perfect world people would share things with you without entering your private email address in other people's systems. I don't want to be in the database of whatever app or system my friends decided to join, nor I want to receive spam from these companies.

Many of the objections come from wanting to do things the old way, without privacy and responsible handling of private data.

ehsankia• 6 years ago

Many of the objections come from wanting to do things the old way, without privacy and responsible handling of private data.

No, they come from the fact that privacy comes at a cost. In this case, it's much harder to receive support, find your account if you lose it, and get proper communication. Everything is a trade off, and anyone who thinks the reason things have been done this way is only to scoop up as much data as possible is either brainwashed or naive. These changes are adding a whole new layer of complexity, which may be worth it in some cases, but in others it just is a net negative for the customer.

closeparen• 6 years ago

Can you elaborate on "private email address"? I'd be offended if someone were careless with a more intimate identifier like my personal cell phone number, but I've always considered arms-length interactions with businesses and institutions I'm not fully on board with to be the whole point of email.

duxup5• 6 years ago

I wonder if Apple would be ok with asking them to give up their email?

Apple clearly likes the idea of the hide option... personally I would expect a less than positive reception from Apple.

I get where both AnyList (if they asked) and Apple (if they didn't like it) would be coming from here.

It does seem to be a shortcoming here where outside of a user one time sign up situation... you don't want to have to burden the user with coming up with silly names and codes to use social like features that require someone else knowing an identifier for you that isn't email.

I don't want to go back to a time where we have to remember / pass along everyone's ICQ number. ...

whateveracct• 6 years ago

I don't think Apple would care about asking for email for legitimate use. I thought the point of Sign in with Apple is that it decouples giving away your email from signing up. Not that it bans apps from collecting emails in any way.

crispyporkbites2• 6 years ago

Why should Apple be allowed to dictate if an app asks for an email address? They should not become the defacto law makers of our society

KeepFlying3• 6 years ago

I think it would come down to user hostility here.

If I sign in with Apple and opt out of giving my email only to be faced with a prompt demanding I give up my email address, I'll be upset. I JUST told the app (via checking the box in Apple) that I don't want to give my mail, so why is it now suddenly required?

However if the app allows me to sign in and only asks for my email when I try to interact with a feature that would be more usable had I given my email, then I would be more accepting of it. Though I would still fully expect to be able to use the app in its entirety even if I opt out.

Now what Apple will say to this, I have no idea. But as a privacy conscious user, I would be happier with this.

As for having to come up with silly names, I don't understand why I need to be discoverable within an app. We have established social media and communication platforms, use them. Let me send a link to a friend to connect with them in your random app. I don't need to be able to add them within the dang app.

envolt2• 6 years ago

Having a user name solve this. Github collaboration works the same way.

m_eiman• 6 years ago

with the “Hide My Email” option, your spouse or friends obviously won’t know your privaterelay.appleid.com email address, so when they enter your email address, our systems will believe that you don’t have an account

Just create an invitation or "share list" link and let the user send it in any way they prefer, be it AirDrop, email or SMS.

The recipient clicks the link, and the service can connect the two accounts as needed (allowing the potentially new user to create an account as needed).

Angostura• 6 years ago

One problem is that most Apple IDs are tied to an iCloud email address.

Is that actually true? None in my household are.

withinboredom• 6 years ago

It depends mostly on the demographic in my experience. For example, my parents have icloud email addresses that they occasionally email me from and never reply to for the reasons mentioned in this post.

ThePowerOfFuet• 6 years ago

Then switch off the Mail option in iCloud settings on their devices. Poof, mailbox disappears.

scarface7411• 6 years ago

My anecdote is similar. I first created my Apple account when the iTunes music store was introduced in 2003.

But, when I setup the account for my mom and my wife, I just created an iCloud email address.

My wife never uses her iCloud email address. I don’t think she uses the default mail client - she uses the gmail app.

rorykoehler4• 6 years ago

I’ve got a new sign in flow I’ll be using for all my indie apps. It solves 2 problems I have with Apple.

1) no PWA support for notifications

2) forcing stuff like this on everyone

I use a telegram chat bot. After signing up via the bot that sends you a link to set your password, you then also request a short expiry sign in link everytime you wish to sign in. The chatbot doubles as a notifications channel. I’m thinking of enhancing notifications do you can interact with them directly from the chatbot interface too.

The signin flow is great as it has 2fa built in by default.

sharp11• 6 years ago

Could you elaborate? Doesn’t this require users to have telegram installed?

rorykoehler4• 6 years ago

Yes. I’ll probably add more chat platforms as I go so you can use whatever one you already have installed

kergonath5• 6 years ago

I am pretty sure I would never create an account on a website that wants me to chat with a bot on Telegram. This sounds particularly user-hostile.

rorykoehler4• 6 years ago

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 platform.

lowmemcpu• 6 years ago

One problem is that most Apple IDs are tied to an iCloud email address. So most accounts created via Sign in with Apple will use an iCloud email address. But many of those iCloud email addresses are unused and unchecked, because a customer’s “real” email account is their Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail account.

Wow, this is a really good point. I just checked and yup -- my AppleID is directly linked to my icloud email, and I've never once checked my icloud email account. I wonder what's in there. Meh, too lazy to go check it

mns• 6 years ago

This seems strange to me. My iCloud account is my Gmail address (even though I also have an iCloud one on the account) and when I use Sign in with Apple I get an option to redirect all emails to Gmail.

But the system is indeed weird, I signed up for an account in an app with bike routes and wanted later to check it in the browser and had no idea what or how to find out what my account is or how should I sign in (could be also the app/website didn't implement this properly).

tzs• 6 years ago

Things may differ from person to person depending on when they created their Apple account(s).

At first, before they had cloud services, you created an Apple account to purchase things from the iTunes store. You could use any email address.

Then they created MobileMe (which was rebranded to .Mac), and that came with an email address @mac.com. (I believe there were a couple of other domains you could choose instead, but don't remember what they were).

That was eventually discontinued, replaced with iCloud, and .Mac accounts were migrated.

Somewhere in all there Apple loosened requirements so that you could use an outside email address as your cloud ID, and made it so a cloud account could could also work as an iTunes account.

For those who created their accounts after that point, it's all sane. Create your Apple account using your outside email address if you want, or using an Apple provided address if you prefer, and then that one account can be used for all your Apple stuff. Buying music, buying or renting video, buying apps, and the cloud stuff.

For those of us who created our accounts before all that, we ended up with an account using our outside address which has our music, video, and app purchases on it, and an account using our @mac.com address that has calendars, photos, and the like.

When they changed it so all Apple accounts could be used for everything, it got even more annoying for us. Whenever we'd see some dialog asking us to sign in to our Apple account, we'd have to guess if it wanted our music/video/app account or our cloud account. If we guessed wrong, we could end up accidentally purchasing apps or media on the cloud account.

Apple does not provide any way to transfer purchases between your accounts, so if you end up with media or app purchases on both accounts there is no way to consolidate other than purchasing duplicates.

If you are willing to do that, or if you have avoided duplicate purchases, you can kind of manually consolidate accounts. You can export calendars, contacts, and the like from your original cloud account, and import them into your original iTunes account. Same for photos, online disk space, and anything else you have on the original cloud account.

Once you've got it all in the original iTunes account, delete everything from the original cloud account, and then just make sure to never again sign into that account. Any time you see the Apple account login dialog, give the original iTunes account.

pwinnski2• 6 years ago

My Apple ID was initially tied to my gmail address, and then at some point Apple forced me to change it, so I use my yahoo address. I never check that address, since I only use it for my Apple ID.

That has never been an issue.

stephenr2• 6 years ago

... I'm not sure I understand this scenario?

So you have an AppleID, which is a full iCloud account (i.e. not just an AppleID using a Gmail address.. So you login to iCloud on some device, and then specifically go untick the "Mail" option in iCloud preferences? Really?

AshamedCaptain• 6 years ago

I found it jarring that Apple would present themselves as the vanguard defenders of privacy by announcing what is basically an email relay service. Most privacy-conscious people wouldn't exactly think of their emails going through Apple as any particular win in privacy.

And even for the "general user" I find the argument very weak, since it doesn't look as being any easier than using any other email relay, and there is a huge obvious conflict of interest for Apple here (they get data they may not have had otherwise PLUS have yet another tool to bind you to their services).

It reminds me of the days where everyone in the www was making OpenID providers but no one was actually willing to do an actual OpenID _consumer_. So that I could actually use _my_ identity provider on a server of _my_ choice instead of going through the hoops of yet another large company for no reason.

WiseWeasel• 6 years ago

How is it anything but a win to have an additional easy option to use a more trusted relay rather than not? Many people have never heard of a relay, and wouldn’t understand its benefit if the option wasn’t presented to them like this.

TheArcane2• 6 years ago

Another issue is Sign in with Apple’s “Hide My Email” feature. With this feature, if you create an account with us, Apple will generate a special email address just for that account. So rather than your email address being john.doe@icloud.com, we will see your email address as something like dpdcnf87nu@privaterelay.appleid.com.

Ironically, this is also why I use Sign Up with Apple at every opportunity I can

renewiltord4• 6 years ago

How is this ironic? It is by design and obviously they know why people do it because the very next sentence says that. Why on Earth would you'd want to use a list-sharing app that uses email as the addressing system and then not share your email.

swagonomixxx3• 6 years ago

The anonymous e-mail that Sign-In with Apple generates forwards to the e-mail used to set up your Apple ID. So it's not like it's a random e-mail that acts as a /dev/null.

This is by far the biggest selling point of Sign-In with Apple for me and I will continue to use it, and continue to not use apps that don't support it. I have plenty of e-mail aliases, but having an alias auto-generated for you is very convenient, and not having to generate a secure password is also very convenient.

The day AnyList gets hacked (not saying it will - but it's highly likely, the way security has taken a backseat due to "features") then at least my personal e-mail and password won't be there for every hacker on Earth to see and try to spam passwords to get into all of my other accounts.

TheArcane2• 6 years ago

It's ironic because anylist cites that as a reason to stop supporting that very feature. That would only reduce my desire to Sign Up for that app.

Smoosh3• 6 years ago

The article also implies that if anyone can guess your email address, they can send you/share with you a list. I wonder what anti-spam measures AnyList implements?

floatingatoll2• 6 years ago

Sign In With Apple would require that AnyList enable SPF protections on any outbound domain registered with Apple for SIWP use:

To send emails to users with private email addresses, you must register your outbound emails or email domains and use Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to authenticate your outbound emails.

Aeolun3• 6 years ago

I assume they rely on the fact that sharing a random list with a random person a thousand times is pointless.

jackson14422• 6 years ago

If they really needed a user ID, just have account holders create a username after the Apple sign-in flow. Most people have a go-to username, and those are easy enough to remember and give to a support associate.

zaroth• 6 years ago

In my experience the “Sign on with Apple“ option makes it totally risk free to click and I don’t even think twice before clicking to create an account whereas a typical registration page will definitely raise the possibility of me bouncing.

Sign-in With Apple is perfect for those accounts that you basically never wanted to have anyway. If it’s something where I want a “real” login, especially one that I might want to share, then I’ll go through the trouble of actually registering and picking a shared secret that my wife and I know.

But for the average app that needs a way to keep a user profile for me, it’s just right, and from a UI perspective on iPhone it really is magic. Two taps and I’m just in with zero mental baggage and an email relay to eliminate the possibility of spam.

olliej• 6 years ago

Um, it doesn’t forward to their iCloud email address, it forwards to the email they use for their iCloud login - eg the primary gmail or whatever address.

Users have the option to provide their personal email address, but given the track record of these being sold it’s reasonable to expect users to not trust you.

You can email them correspondence because as above that goes to their primary email.

What you lose is the value of the email address as an asset.

scarface7411• 6 years ago

Your iCloud account does not have to be paired with an iCloud email address. Mine is paired with my regular email address.

snazz• 6 years ago

Yes, but many are. This app in particular needs an email address that is actually checked.

scarface7411• 6 years ago

From what others have said, they also need it to add to their marketing list....

forrestthewoods3• 6 years ago

Furthermore, if there are platforms where AnyList doesn’t support Sign in with Apple, like Android, and someone wants to log into their account, they’d have to know their privaterelay.appleid.com email address. (And that certainly won’t be easy to find if you no longer have an iOS device.) And then they’d have to create a password with us, since they wouldn’t be able to sign in using Sign in with Apple.

I’m an avid iOS user with a Windows desktop. I will never use “Sign-In with Apple” for this reason. It’s not useable unless you exclusively use Apple devices. Which I don’t.

WorldMaker9• 6 years ago

Sign-In with Apple is a (mostly) standard OpenID Connect provider that works everywhere (and works just like sign in with FB, Google, et al from a technical implementation), including the Web and Android. It's an interesting miscommunication or misunderstanding (and I was not surprised to see it in this article) that applications and developers think the "Sign in with Apple" button should only show up on Apple devices. It should show up on the web and in Android apps, Apple only requires it on Apple devices because that's the only devices that they control.

I wish Apple communicated that better and/or developers better understood that Sign in with Apple really is a FB/Google/social login button like all of the others and should be supported everywhere, not just Apple devices.

(I'm in the iOS/Windows dual mode user team myself these days and find that I trust Sign-In with Apple, but I've definitely had to already email developers to request that they add the Sign-In with Apple button to websites and explain why they would/should.)

tech-historian3• 6 years ago

If you read the article, you'd see they address the reason they cannot implement it on Android yet. Apple hasn't provided documentation for it. Apple doesn't seem to be taking it seriously.

forrestthewoods3• 6 years ago

If I’m on Windows and see Sign-in with Apple how am I supposed to sign in? By typing in a generated email address? It’d not that it can’t work, it’s that it’s a miserable user experience.

SergeAx• 6 years ago

Side note: there's (almost) no problem implementing Apple sign in on Android. It is basically the same OAuth flow as Facebook or Twitter, with couple of minor quirks.

floatingatoll2• 6 years ago

Apple's developer docs on the Private Email Relay Service are relevant to those evaluating the technicals of AnyList's position. Three specific highlights from that doc are relevant when considering AnyList's objections:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple...

After the user has shared a private relay email address with your app, they can find, view, and manage it in their account settings at Settings > Apple ID > Password & Security > Apps Using Your Apple ID.

The relay server transforms your email address so it’s readable to the user. For example, sales@xyz.com may become sales_at_xyz_com_<something>@privaterelay.appleid.com instead of a random email address. Replies from the user are still routed back through the service to preserve the user’s privacy.

To send emails to users with private email addresses, you must register your outbound emails or email domains and use Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to authenticate your outbound emails.

WorldMaker9• 6 years ago

Furthermore, if there are platforms where AnyList doesn’t support Sign in with Apple, like Android, and someone wants to log into their account, they’d have to know their privaterelay.appleid.com email address. (And that certainly won’t be easy to find if you no longer have an iOS device.) And then they’d have to create a password with us, since they wouldn’t be able to sign in using Sign in with Apple.

The easy answer is: they should just support "Sign in with Apple" on every platform. (That absolutely works. Sign in with Apple is a [mostly] standard OpenID Connect provider and has a web frontend that should work on every non-Apple platform just fine, just like FB/Google/etc.)

You wouldn't think to only support "Sign in with Google" only on Android devices? Maybe "Sign in with Facebook" should only apply to web browsers?

It's an interesting misconception or miscommunication that so many developers think "Sign in with Apple" should only show up on Apple devices.

tech-historian3• 6 years ago

Sure, except there is no documentation for it. From the article:

"For example, Apple vaguely states that you can implement Sign in with Apple on Android, but there is no direct documentation on how to do it. We understand that Apple probably doesn’t care much for Android, but if they are going to provide a login system, and are going to force developers of multi-platform apps to adopt it, then providing no real support for a major platform that these multi-platform apps run on is not acceptable."

WorldMaker9• 6 years ago

Apple has provided documentation, it seems like the article describes a lack of attempt at trying?

On the Getting Started [1] page it lists three options: Apple platforms [use AuthenticationServices], Unity [use the asset from the Unity Asset Store], and "Web and Other Platforms" [use Apple JS/REST]. That "Web and Other Platforms" link provides a wealth of useful documentation [2].

Tbf, the exact word "Android" is missing, but this is an elementary school-level process of elimination that maybe Android is inferred in the words "other platforms".

[1] https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/get-started/

[2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple...

lstamour• 6 years ago

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple... is more “direct” than most of the documentation I’ve seen on how to implement “OAuth” with other providers. (Trying to figure out how to integrate with “Microsoft 365” is particularly painful...)

Eventually you might realize it’s based on an open standard https://openid.net/2019/09/30/apple-successfully-implements-... and that it’s relatively similar to other such standards, except with the option to mask your email, etc.

As an geeky end user, the only way I trust these services for login is if I can link more than one, or even more than one email from the same provider. That way I know I’ll have a backup in case I lose access to the social network or email address that I signed in with... it’s annoying when I can’t add a password or set an email just because I also want to login without a password sometimes...

on_and_off3• 6 years ago

Also, even if they support it, it does not look like Apple has released an app or SDK for Android.

So there would be no apple account registered on the phone.

So each app wanting to implement apple login would have to :

- pretty much implement it from scratch

- still have a very subpar experience compared to any other login mechanism (even way worse than email + password) since they would have to ask users to find their obfuscated apple email address.

Karupan• 6 years ago

That’s what I was thinking as well. Why not just treat it like any other OpenID provider and show it for all platforms?

stevepike• 6 years ago

Heck, I've been happily using "Sign in with Apple" on linux anywhere I can.

dahfizz5• 6 years ago

They directly address this point. In the article they say they considered adding sign in with Apple everywhere. Besides the fact that it's more code to write and test, they say the documentation is very poor for other platforms, as it's not even great for iOS.

WorldMaker9• 6 years ago

It seems sufficient to me?

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple...

l3s2d• 6 years ago

I agree in principal, but in practice this isn't as easy as one would hope. Each IdP has slightly different requirements and parameters for connecting clients. There may be significant code non-overlap across providers, not to mention across platforms.

Facebook, for instance, doesn't actually implement OpenID Connect, but has a custom layer on top of OAuth. Their recommended method of connecting is a client SDK for each platform.

thealistra2• 6 years ago

For me it sounds like they didn’t like the additional work Apple made them do, that would actually benefit the end user - I love sign in with apple, the best part is the unified workflow without typing on a phone.

I dream of a world when I won’t have to type passwords on a phone anymore.

tech-historian3• 6 years ago

Their blog post is well written and explains point by point why implementing it would be problematic for them AND for end users. Strange that you arrived at the conclusion "they didn’t like the additional work Apple made them do"

thealistra2• 6 years ago

They describe and edge case of someone not getting the email or wanting to login on another platform.

I’m talking about the most common happy path that they don’t want to optimize - the user registration/login

I hate typing a secure password on a phone and I want to evade this process whenever possible. Using Sign in with Apple you don’t have to type a thing and you confirm using FaceId.

It seems like the problems they were facing require different UX solutions than they already had or some bug reports to Apple (if the feature is really missing something).

For me it is much better to use Sign in with Apple as the user as the flow is simple, unified and Apple has a track record of caring about privacy, where it is often not the case for randomservice.io

gramakri• 6 years ago

Not an Apple use but I had a question. If one signs up with Signin with Apple, how can that user move over his stuff to say an Android app? Or even Desktop app? (Or does the Apple ID keep track of all this anonymous id to app mapping?)

faet2• 6 years ago

You still have your apple account on your PC/Android phone/etc. You just login on apple's website with your apple account and it passes the token/id to whatever app needs it.

For example you can goto dropbox on your pc/whatever and click signin with apple to see how it works.

artichikin• 6 years ago

Last year we pulled all social logins (facebook, google, yahoo) out of our app, after supporting them for years. The UX / customer service issues mentioned in this post are absolutely legit, a complete PITA. While we were nervous about adding the extra signup friction, a year later I can easily say it was worth doing.

temporarysdwvit2• 6 years ago

Why do you need to log in in this app? All the problems indicate that app is used on one device only

vmception• 6 years ago

so all of this could be fixed by AnyList just asking the user to type in their email address instead of tying it to a data mining operation from their login name

well at least they are honest!

persona2• 6 years ago

This seems to be a common problem, made more visible when using third-party authentication, that your application has taken the concepts of "Account" and "Authentication Method" as if they were the same thing.

It appears that the "account ID", "preferred contact method+address" and "authentication ID" are all the same here - which then creates the "account management code into a rat’s nest" scenario they describe in the post.

If an Account is, by design, it's own entity - you should be able to have 100 different authentication methods linked to that same account without impacting any other flow or part of the application.

Turn on and off authentication methods would also allow for seamless transition for users, without worrying about when one method is about to be killed.

dukoid• 6 years ago

+1 Any authentication method that I have enabled for my email should work -- there shouldn't be a need to remember which one is associated with a particular service...

dahfizz5• 6 years ago

I feel like they address this in the article. What you say makes sense in a technical UML diagram point of view, but that's not how people work.

The examples they give are getting support and sharing things with another person with an account. As a user, both of those things are easier for me if there is an email associated with the account.

Said another way, the Account needs some human friendly global identifier. The email you use to log in is an obvious choice, and anything else would require extra work from the user to set up. You could have usernames, for example, but that complicates the signup process and still makes sharing things hard. I know my friends emails already, but I don't know what username they ended up with on this site.

persona2• 6 years ago

I'd argue that this makes more sense in the real world than in a diagram, after being burnt in multiple real life experiences :)

The assumption both you and AnyList are making is that an email is "THE obvious choice". From a user experience perspective perhaps this "global sharing identifier" should be defined by them.

You'll notice that different generations have different online behaviors. For some, email is their main id. For others, it's their phone number (they don't know most of their friends' e-mail, but know their phone). For others, it's either online handles or nothing at all - think about the device set up for grandma with her daily To Do list.

Of course, having this approach would add some upfront dev work to them but allow them to navigate this much easier later on. And for anyone starting to develop their new app/site/product thinking about this early on can reduce a lot of future headaches.

mr_toad• 6 years ago

I don’t see any technical reason this couldn’t be done, but it would be more work for both the app developers and the user.

JAlexoid14• 6 years ago

Time and value are not "technical", though they can be measured.

Technically you can build an app that's purely a AR sticky notes specifically on your fridge... but the value of that app is approximately 0.

gitgud• 6 years ago

I think the problem is that many apps, use the same form for login/signup. So a user thinks they're logging in, but they're actually creating a new account with a new authentication method...

nikitaga3• 6 years ago

With rare specialized exceptions, pretty much nobody needs all this complexity. Certainly not a simple app like AnyList. All this flexibility is not free, it comes at the cost of obviousness, as they described. It's not worth it much of the time.

The real problem is Apple shoving their proprietary, poorly designed services down everyone's throats.

No, I don't want to use icloud email, I already have an email address. No, I don't want to provide a "real" email address after I provided an obfuscated one. No it's not my fault that messages sent to the obfuscated one will go to some icloud inbox that I didn't create and I don't read. No, it's also not my fault that when I contact support I do it from my normal email address and not from the obfuscated one (how would I even do that). It's not the support's fault that they can't connect the two.

It's not the user's fault, and it's not the developer's fault. Apple is the sole designer of this mess. There is no excuse.

dev_tty013• 6 years ago

You can create an iCloud account with your own email address. That avoids getting another email address.

When using Apple login, Apple offers the choice of providing an anonymous email to the third party or your actual email. It's up to you. Its about user choice. More privacy or less. Apple wants you to have a choice. Use it or not.

fiddlerwoaroof• 6 years ago

It’s pretty user-hostile to refuse to support the authentication provider the user wants to use. If I’m already in the Apple ecosystem, using Sign In with Apple, a service that doesn’t implement Sign In with Apple but could is preventing me from doing what I want, just as much as Walmart not accepting Apple Pay.

danpalmer• 6 years ago

Another issue with Sign in with Apple is the fact that their private relay has a pre-set allow-list per app for sending email to relay addresses.

This means that you must either prove ownership of domains, or pre-add email addresses to Apple's systems. I understand why they have done this, it will reduce spam considerably, but the private relay system is already designed to empower users to do this and this extra step may be impossible for some developers.

Take for example a retailer – they need to dispatch goods and use different carriers in different countries. When the user buys something they very likely want email notifications about delivery, a feature that most carriers provide. For the carriers to send those notification emails you'll need to pre-add them all to Apple's systems. You can't prove domain ownership because fedex.com isn't your domain, but where are those emails going to come from? Better hope your carrier doesn't change sending address at some point or the email goes into a black hole.

Apple also limits the number of domains and addresses you can send from. In the original documentation it was "10 domains and addresses" (not sure if 10 of each, or 10 total). This was raised to 100 I believe, but that's still probably an issue for larger multi-national companies, or those who necessarily have to integrate with many external services.

The really hard-line privacy stance is that the retailer shouldn't share the emails and should do the notifications themselves, but for many this is prohibitively difficult to do, or at least detracts from places where the retailer can actually add value. The benefits are also very small, as the contracts with carriers typically protect user data, require deletion quickly after delivery, and retain most privacy benefits while allowing for a good UX.

rossjudson• 6 years ago

That's a good point, but I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't have (or is building) a mechanism to allow certain well-known domains to be trusted sender, in the circumstances you note. Like, have "enter your custom domain", but also "checkboxes for fedex.com, etc".

afro88• 6 years ago

Makes sense to support it and respect users privacy. If they forget their login, they can just sign in with apple again? And if they contact you for support they can provide their email address to you then.

ccktlmazeltov• 6 years ago

I find Apple's Sign in approach shady (forcing apps to have it, and have it first on the list), but this response is also about not liking the privacy features of Apple Sign in so... I wouldn't read much into it.

ocdtrekkie• 6 years ago

I mean, if this is pushing them to remove Facebook login, Sign in with Apple and the resulting requirement to use it has been a net positive for privacy for AnyList as well.

crazygringo2• 6 years ago

As they point out at the very bottom, all their arguments apply to all third-party sign-ons, so they're removing Facebook as well.

So there's nothing specifically against Apple, despite the title seeming to imply it -- just that they're taking the move right now because of Apple's new policy coming into effect.

I've got to say, I really wish there were a way to know whether I already used Facebook, Google, or Apple to log into a site or app before. My password manager is usually pretty good at letting me know if I've got a "normal" account with user/password, but it doesn't do anything to remind me if I ought to log in with one of the other services.

Every time I'm occasionally asked to sign into Spotify, Pinterest, Medium, Quora, etc. -- it's like, I'm pretty sure I've signed up with something before, but who even knows which one, or multiple?

If password managers could start saving that you've got accounts associated with Apple/Facebook/Google and highlight the relevant button on sign-in, it would be a big feature improvement.

TheSpiceIsLife• 6 years ago

This happened to me recently where, in a hurry and distracted, I logged in with one or another third party auth service then realised that wasn’t the correct login as it displayed a new account.

jborichevskiy• 6 years ago

Yes! Especially once you start juggling multiple accounts for different companies and projects. Becomes a guessing game, and each wrong guess creates another account magically. Infuriating

warent• 6 years ago

Time to create a new service to unify all your SSO accounts! One single SSO!

dmitshur• 6 years ago

And if you create an account accidentally, there’s often no way to undo that.

Next, if you don’t add a second-factor with to it, it becomes a ticking countdown until the account is compromised.

joshspankit3• 6 years ago

Having had this same problem multiple times, I actually made it a point to save a “login” for those sites that when I autofill it reminds me which auth service I’ve used.

Username: Log in with FB

Password: <blank>

niyikiza• 6 years ago

Neat trick. Some websites don't even bother giving you any choice for traditional username/password input though.

ben509• 6 years ago

I do something similar with a generic password manager.

I've tried pinging the developers to support the idea directly, but I've been met with incomprehension.

Not sure if I'm explaining it wrong, or if it's way more work than I'm anticipating.

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

As they point out at the very bottom, all their arguments apply to all third-party sign-ons, so they're removing Facebook as well.

That section of the post was surprising. If they're not supporting Sign in with Apple, then obviously they're going to remove support for all other third-party sign-ons, because those third-party sign-ons are what trigger the obligation to support Sign in with Apple.

Ending their post about "why we won't be supporting Sign in with Apple" with a note that they're also ending Sign in with Facebook on the merits of third-party sign-in is quite disingenuous. It doesn't matter at all what they think about the merits of Sign in with Facebook; those thoughts are completely irrelevant to their decision.

mdavidn• 6 years ago

I cope with this confusion by avoiding third-party login whenever possible. Why volunteer additional information about myself to Google or Facebook?

sequoia• 6 years ago

Because you can frequently avoid account creation, setting a new password etc if you click “sign in with google.” It’s a tradeoff but if you don’t see any value in it you maybe haven’t used it- it’s convenient.

ourcat• 6 years ago

"I really wish there were a way to know whether I already used Facebook, Google, or Apple to log into a site or app before"

You can. On each of the places you mention (Google and Facebook, certainly), somewhere in a settings page/window, you'll find your list of 'authorised apps'.

These will be a list the login systems to the third-party sites you've used to log in with.

You should then see a way to 'revoke' their access to your data.

jdxcode• 6 years ago

That doesn't solve the problem. You would have to go to every method to figure out which one it might be listed under. It needs to be in the browser/password manager to tell you which service was used.

rahimnathwani• 6 years ago

"all their arguments apply to all third-party sign-ons"

No they don't. Other sign-on options don't obfuscate the email address.

They are likely removing FB login as otherwise their next app update will be rejected by Apple for supporting third party login but not Apple login.

monadic22• 6 years ago

Surely you can’t hide your email from apple itself.

scarlac2• 6 years ago

It used to be true that during a Facebook Connect session the user was asked if they wanted to share their email or not. I faintly remember you could even choose a proxy fb e-mail aka "fake email". Did they remove that feature?

AnonC3• 6 years ago

Obfuscation of the email address is an explicit choice by the user when using Sign in with Apple. It’s not something forced by the service. If users are choosing to do that, it says something about the lack of trust the users have with whatever they’re signing up for.

rswail• 6 years ago

They don't obfuscate the email address you use with them.

I don't share my "real" email address with Facebook.

My Google account isn't my main account, it's a throwaway I use for things that require email to sign up.

This is a general problem for all OAuth IdPs.

dcow2• 6 years ago

Also other login providers haven't done massively stupid things like not authenticate the actual email address when issuing tokens... like common who in their right mind would want to adopt a new service with a piss poor security reputation for a critical security sensitive leg of their stack?!

jobu• 6 years ago

That may be a reason in the future, but they did specifically mention a couple really good reasons to dump Facebook login now:

"That’s become even more true as time goes on, since Facebook constantly seems to be upping the ante with creepy privacy practices. We use the Facebook SDK to provide login functionality, and every new release of the SDK seems to add new tracking options that are turned on by default, which we have to take action to disable. Furthermore, the Facebook SDK has quality problems, and recently caused a huge number of iOS apps to crash due to a misconfigured server."

kevsim• 6 years ago

Additionally many other 3rd party login systems have been around much longer than Sign in with Apple, which was another strike against Apple for the author.

msh3• 6 years ago

As a user I can't see why any random app needs to know my true email address.

necovek5• 6 years ago

Nor do they demand you implement their SSO system if you use any SSO or your app would not be available.

That's a pretty big argument specifically against Apple!

cbhl• 6 years ago

I've got to say, I really wish there were a way to know whether I already used Facebook, Google, or Apple to log into a site or app before.

Bookwalker (from Japan) draws a big red box around the login you used last on a given device. Presumably they store a cookie/sharedpreferences with it. It doesn't look pretty, but it helps.

saagarjha2• 6 years ago

That's useful, but on any device of mine I'm usually logged in anyways. What would be really useful is knowing this when I log into a new computer.

grawprog• 6 years ago

My password manager is usually pretty good at letting me know if I've got a "normal" account with user/password, but it doesn't do anything to remind me if I ought to log in with one of the other services.

Doesn't it somewhat defeat the purpose of using a password manager if you use one account to sign into multiple sites?

Sign on services from main accounts seem like security flaws. If you use one main account resonsible for all your 'main things' to sign in to all the 'other things' that gives one vector of attack to enter or compromise 'all the things'.

Password managers exist to make the management of many things as easy as one thing, not to adapt to using one thing for everything, that's pretty much the opposite of what a password manager does.

Sign on services don't exist for convenience, despite being marketed that way, they exist to increase data collection abilities. Password managers exist to make using multiple accounts as easy as using a sign on service, that's the point. They should be separate from existing providers. They are an alternative to them.

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

Doesn't it somewhat defeat the purpose of using a password manager if you use one account to sign into multiple sites?

Yes. Password managers exist to solve the problem of credential reuse; third-party login exists to implement credential reuse. They are fundamentally opposed.

crazygringo2• 6 years ago

First of all, you need a password manager no matter what even if you use Facebook etc., because not everybody supports Facebook etc.

Second, it often still takes a lot of work to create a new account on a site, even with a password manager. Selecting a username, discovering it's taken, selecting another one, generating a random password, pasting it into a second field to confirm the password, unchecking "send me updates", going to my email to find the confirm link, blah blah blah.

If I just want to do something quick on a site (like see a Quora answer or Medium post), it can be far easier to just click "log in with Google" and see the content in 5 seconds rather than 5 minutes while you wait for the damned account confirmation email.

jasonlingx• 6 years ago

As they point out at the very bottom, all their arguments apply to all third-party sign-ons, so they're removing Facebook as well.

Nope, not all their arguments. Only some.

cj• 6 years ago

So there's nothing specifically against Apple

The one thing that is specifically against Apple is the new App Store policy that if an app uses google/Facebook sign in, the app _must_ also use Apple Sign In.

habosa• 6 years ago

I worked on a product that can do that (Google Smartlock for Passwords) but these “identity provider” hints were extremely confusing to both users and developers. The UX definitely could have been better but overall I just don’t think it works.

Thorrez• 6 years ago

all their arguments apply to all third-party sign-ons

What about the argument that users check their gmail addresses regularly but rarely check their icloud email addresses?

imron3• 6 years ago

So there's nothing specifically against Apple, despite the title seeming to imply it

From the article...

In addition to these customer experience problems that are common to all third-party login systems, Sign in with Apple introduces several more that are unique to it.

ryanianian• 6 years ago

I create dummy logins in my password manager for sites that use external auth. Username of just “LOGIN WITH GOOGLE”. Hacky but it makes me smile every time it gets filled in.

kripy• 6 years ago

Perform an audit on yourself. Both Facebook [1] and Google [2] have pages where you can check third-party apps that you have connected with. You might be surprised what you find.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications&ref=setti...

[2] https://myaccount.google.com/security

mcintyre1994• 6 years ago

As they point out at the very bottom, all their arguments apply to all third-party sign-ons, so they're removing Facebook as well.

Nope, some of them also apply to Facebook, and Facebook has the additional destruction of privacy concern. They have to remove Facebook or support Apple too because of the policy and have chose neither instead of both.

Some of their concerns specifically don’t apply to Facebook/Google/anything directly tied to your real email that you’d otherwise choose to sign up with. You add a bit of complexity to your database to record different login types, but you can easily reconcile them to an existing user if the emails match, and provide the features they want like searching for a user by email.

spullara• 6 years ago

This is as close as we got trying to do it from the app itself: https://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1906

I absolutely agree that password managers could remember this stuff. Single-signon is pretty easy to identify and you could setup the relationship.

ivoecpereira• 6 years ago

As I would liked your approach in other times, wouldn't it be a bad one in today"s privacy matters/GDPR and being able to enumerate your database?

envolt2• 6 years ago

Not all.

1. Apple obfuscate email - this complicates the support system, and as per them Apple hadn't thought about it thoroughly. Collaboration is obstructed. Password recovery is not an easy process. 2. Cross Platform - The post states that Apple vaguely says that sign in on Android is possible, but doesn't state how it is to be done.

yreg• 6 years ago

Apple vaguely says that sign in on Android is possible, but doesn't state how it is to be done.

They do?

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple...

meerita• 6 years ago

I don't support social login anymore. It's better for the customer.

dalore• 6 years ago

Paperspace has this with their Google integration. And I've implemented this pattern before in web dev.

You return to the site and if you have logged in with social media site before, and it detected you are still logged in, it will auto login for you.

neya• 6 years ago

Did you actually bother to read the post? The post specifically explains the headaches associated with Apple sign in. In particular -

"Another issue is Sign in with Apple’s “Hide My Email” feature. With this feature, if you create an account with us, Apple will generate a special email address just for that account. So rather than your email address being john.doe@icloud.com, we will see your email address as something like dpdcnf87nu@privaterelay.appleid.com. While this is an intriguing idea that provides a measure of privacy, in practice it creates numerous support and user experience headaches..."

dustinmoris• 6 years ago

TBF if single sign on is implemented correctly and you use the same email address across your accounts then it shouldn't matter which SSO you're using.

When you log in for the first time it should request permission to "see your email address". Then you authenticate with your provider and get redirected back at which point the website should create an account for you on behalf of that email address. If next time you log in again via a complete different provider which has the same email address then it should just work. I mean that is the whole point of this...

kerkeslager• 6 years ago

Given all these third-party sign-ins are a fairly transparent grab for power by the central company, I'm not sure why anyone would implement any of them. By doing that you're giving up power over your sign-in process, which is a pretty enormous concession.

jeffrogers• 6 years ago

I dunno. There are simple solutions to the issues raised in the blog post, many good ones here in the comments. Seems likely they wanted to get rid of third party logins and oddly chose to throw it on Apple. And I’m not sure anyone, including Apple, cares if they adopt Sign In with Apple. In the end, I think everyone just wants to end creepy sign-in practices. Facebook login deleted from Anylist... that’s a win for everyone.

Reason077• 6 years ago

"One problem is that most Apple IDs are tied to an iCloud email address."

Is this really true? I've had Apple IDs for pretty much as long as they've existed, but I've never had an iCloud email. Any email address can be an Apple ID.

(...in fact, early on, it didn't even have to be an email address. I still have one of those old-style Apple IDs.)

asasidh• 6 years ago

This is a war between apps and platforms on who gets direct access to customers.

jonplackett• 6 years ago

What a well written and forceful argument.

dred_prte_rbrts• 6 years ago

Is it just me or do these sites not realize that "We will never sell your email" does nothing for me? It's not that you'll sell it's that you will get hacked or lose a laptop or have an admin email everyone and then I will get spam. How do others at HN deal with this (disposable emails and prefix/suffix are a huge pain)

mikece• 6 years ago

The larger problem is trying to get the average Facebook and Instagram user to care about security (if they cared about those things they wouldn’t be on a Facebook product but I digress).

I applaud Apple’s intentions but as this article proves, if the user isn’t driving the push to be more private then initiatives like Sign In With Apple cause little more than support headaches.

rickyc091• 6 years ago

If you disable your account through Apple's website the email is no longer valid. Does anyone know if they recycle the emails?

huslage• 6 years ago

Some of this can be solved by asking a user for their email when they open a support ticket. Also allowing them to link accounts from multiple login providers. These are largely "solved" issues.

m3kw9• 6 years ago

The convenience and supposed privacy of signing in with Apple ID out weights the cons. People will still have problem remembering which email they used down the road.

musicale• 6 years ago

Well, that's another app I won't be using.

surround• 6 years ago

What about vendor lock-in? Apple forced many apps on the App Store to use Sign In with Apple for increased “convenience” but it also makes it very inconvenient for people to switch to Android.

dangoor• 6 years ago

https://github.com/willowtreeapps/sign-in-with-apple-button-...

scarlac2• 6 years ago

Yes, that's mentioned in the article:

if there are platforms where AnyList doesn’t support Sign in with Apple, like Android, and someone wants to log into their account, they’d have to know their privaterelay.appleid.com email address.

fulldecent2• 6 years ago

I usually uninstall apps with a 1-star review if they provide zero functionality until you provide your email address.

Apps and devices serve me, not the other way around.

t0astbread• 6 years ago

So you don't use social media on your phone?

njsubedi• 6 years ago

In a rat-race of adding a bunch of (Sign in with xyz) buttons everywhere in the login forms, this news feels good in a weird way. Most developers use OAuth login support using several other services to reduce the friction of signing up, but this article made me think about this for a while. I've been in a situation where I could not remember whether I signed up using a provider.

Password managers and 2FA options are getting popular in the mainstream media, and most people know about it after their financial service providers are mandating 2FA. It's probably time we figure out an easy way for users to sign in using a random alias of their email address to sign in to any service. Something that is generated using their real email address, the service provider's domain name and some kind of salting. This is the time the plain old username-password login came back.

jbarches2• 6 years ago

Recently went through the same debacle. Our hope was that we could solely rely on Magic Link instead of email/password ... but it turns out many users don't really understand it [1]. So your options are:

1) Email/Password Sign In

2) Bite the bullet and add Apple / the "full auth stack" (FB/Google/etc.) & deal with account linking issues.

[1] https://snaphabit.app/blog/password-less-login/

alister• 6 years ago

Apple reserves the right to disable Sign in with Apple on a website or app for any reason at any time.

Holy cow, how is this acceptable to any app developer or software company? This is reason enough for me to never use Apple/Facebook/Google sign-on as a developer -- huh, or even as a user. Apple/Facebook/Google could lock out all your users and literally destroy your business in a split second for an arbitrary policy violation, without explaining why, with no way to contact a human being. Haven't we seen enough HN headlines where an independent developer or a small software company is begging for help because <LargeCorporation> canceled their account or locked them out of something with no recourse?

EDIT: I know that AnyList is dependent on Apple's app store. This is still no reason to give Apple (or Google or Facebook) even more power over you.

ramraj07• 6 years ago

This seems like the only bummer rule of all. I really would like to use this service on my next project but this dictator rule cannot be tolerated.

nexuist• 6 years ago

You know the reason. It's on the front page of HN today even. Apple will support Sign in with Apple until it is co-opted by "white nationalists" or other scary characters, at which point they will disassociate with that website or app and prevent their services from working with them.

Which is their right of course, but at the end of the day it means we get changes like these in the fine print. Gatekeepers like Apple and Google gain more control over what is allowed on their platforms, and subsequently what is allowed for the majority of the population to see.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 6 years ago

Why have you put that term in scare-quotes?

TazeTSchnitzel2• 6 years ago

It's not like other popular login systems can't also arbitrarily terminate your account, but the really problematic thing here is “Sign in with Apple”'s email hiding, which removes the lifeline of emailing your customers when you lose your sign-in provider.

AnonC3• 6 years ago

The only authentic point I saw in this entire article was the one about the lack of documentation by Apple in implementing this across different platforms.

Everything else applies to logging in with Facebook (or can be dealt with in other ways), which the company has supported for years and is now forced to remove it because of Apple’s restrictions. Without Sign In with Apple, I doubt if they would’ve chosen to remove the Facebook login anytime soon, thus putting more users into privacy hell holes despite making statements like this:

“At AnyList, we respect your privacy.

...

When you provide us with your email address, it is never sold, shared, or used to invade your privacy.”

If the documentation had been good enough, I’m sure they would’ve implemented it and also retained Facebook login for a longer time. Seeing Facebook login being removed gives me some comfort and a sense of “all’s well that ends well”.

ascotan• 6 years ago

Love it. I hate it when I'm presented with a "sign in with Google". I feel pressured to have a Gmail account or a Facebook account (which I honestly don't want).

I get the fact that login is broken across the web and there is no centralized login authority, but sorry Google/Facebook are not it imho.

We can/should look at other ways to authenticate, but thats a larger discussion.

Razengan• 6 years ago

I had never heard of AnyList and this makes sure I will never use them.

Before Sign in with Apple, I uninstalled most apps that required me to sign up before I could even try them at all. Now I specifically look for apps that support it.

I don't want to give my email to 100 different companies (I get spam on the aliases that I did hand out long ago to apps that aren't even around anymore).

Though, all these hitherto obscure companies jumping into the spotlight just by setting themselves up as the underdog against the Apple world tree gives me an idea of what to do when I want a quick boost in popularity.. :)

dcow2• 6 years ago

I'd like to see Apple allow users to use "Sign in with Apple" to maintain Apple ID account and purchase hardware/software? Imagine if they had to go through what they're asking all the services on their platform to go through... yeah... never gonna happen. Bravo AnyList for calling Apple out for pushing immature software ecosystem harmful software agenda.

Orlan• 6 years ago

All of them good points. I'll add another wrinkle; for some reasons I can barely remember, I have 2 different Apple IDs. I was a paid .Mac user when it was a thing, but I also had a different account to make iTunes purchases back in the day. Currently I need to log in with both in my devices; one of them is used for purchasing in iTunes/App Store, the other one is used for iCloud Photos/iCloud Drive. However you can also make purchases in the Books app (which I use it to sync PDFs), so this always trips me up. There's no way to merge two Apple IDs, and setting up a new device is always an adventure. Knowing when to use which Apple ID can be confusing (don't get me started on 2FA, I'm afraid that having 2 Apple IDs will eventually lead to me getting locked out!).

I liked the concept of Sign in with Apple when I first heard about it, but at this point it might be too confusing (I also never check my "main" Apple ID email).

mssio• 6 years ago

Developer should just ask for user's email after new sign up using third party provider. Even Facebook does not require email for user to sign up. They should separate the email used for the account & the email used for third party sign in. Because 1 user can have multiple third party sign in, all with different email.

I think they did not need to care about customer who did not check the reply email from support, because customer can also have multiple email and did not use their primary email to sign up to your service.

esperent• 6 years ago

What's to stop someone signing up with a fake email and sharing it on a forum so that many people can sign in with it?

Yes, I know that there are ways to reduce this by scanning IPs and so on, but by using third party auth you offload that onto the auth providers.

NorwegianDude3• 6 years ago

I seriously hope I'll see the day when OpenID takes off. It doesn't seem to be going the right way, but it would solve most of our login problems.

One way to sign in, used everywhere, decentralized, set up 2FA for everything in one place, switch providers with ease or be your own provider.

Apple could promote a decentralized solution instead of forcing the sign in with apple shit on people, but clearly they want all your data so they can lock you in.

ianamartin• 6 years ago

Apple having a major flaw is a pretty bad mark against this. But in my experience, companies doing it themselves are far worse.

The correct response to "Yo, they fucked up." is not "Oh screw it. We'll just do it ourselves."

Mave83• 6 years ago

Why not just bind the sso Mail to an local Account, then it doesn't matter what identity Provider gets used by the customer. In addition, add a check that prevents Account creation of ...@privacyrelay...if you have a problem with it or nag the user to provide a real mail for this account if you detect this type of mail. This way you would have a user friendly implementation without giving up on sso.

camillomiller• 6 years ago

Well, though titty. Honestly, as a user, I don’t give a damn about the pains this can cause to developers. The amount of spam and unsolicited email crap this is gonna save me from is worth it 100% for the users. And as a developer, I honestly think that Third party sign ins are lazy solutions that empower data-hungry companies way more than they deserve. If your business model relies on people giving you their data or reselling their email or using it for unsolicited purposes (these are the only reasons you would be affected financially by a privacy-driven solution like SIWA) then your business model is bullshit. Suck it up.

EDIT: I really love the downvotes from developers that are perfectly aware this is how the things are.

HenryBemis• 6 years ago

your email address, it is never sold, shared, or used to invade your privacy.

This is ambiguous. "..to invade your privacy". They should have stopped at "sold, shared. The "to invade your privacy" is a bit doublespeak. One can say "we do not invade privacy, we merely inform of new products and services (aka marketing).

I know I am being pedantic, but hey.. it doesn't write "never" it writes "never for A".. we never wrote "never for B", so B is allowed by our T&C (which I haven't read so I may stand corrected).

qwerty456127• 6 years ago

There are 3 major problems with this kind of sign-in from the user perspective they apparently omit: whenever you sign-up for a service B with an account at A (usually Google, probably applies to Apple, Facebook and the rest as well) 1. A will block your account at B at any time as soon as its (A's) algorithms realize they don't like you for some stupid reason they won't even tell you (which is icky but understandable given how many users they serve) 2. A tracks your usage of B (obviously). 3. The most overlooked - A discloses many additional details about you (like your contacts, your location, your birth date, your real name etc.) to B. Sign up to some shitty website once and they immediately have enough data on you to apply a wide range of social engineering / identity theft attacks with ease.

I actually can consciously accept the 2 in many specific cases but 1 and 3, each alone, are enough for me to avoid using this kind of sign-in.

lrem• 6 years ago

Why is 2 so obvious? I imagine many implementations would do that, but basically once you exchange your SSO token for the site-specific token, you could stop making any requests to the SSO provider. The only part of your SSO provider's offering that inherently needs to track you is running detection if you're a bot.

ludditetech• 6 years ago

Well opined piece, as a customer of Anylist for over 3 years you have my full support in this decision.

axilmar• 6 years ago

I wonder why we still have passwords. Couldn't we have a simple USB device that is encrypted, cooperates with the native O/S in an encrypted manner, and then allows remote login to sites also in an encrypted manner?

The device could be programmed to automatically generate new passwords/keys/whatever needed for remote authentication.

It would also have a 'disable' functionality that would render it useless if stolen.

(Perhaps this thing already exists. I am too lazy to google it as I type this :-)).

GoblinSlayer2• 6 years ago

Identifying users by email is a bad practice anyway. Such systems usually don't provide a way to change the email address, because it's literally your id. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to migrate between email addresses.

ThePhysicist• 6 years ago

We've implemented a bunch of third-party login solutions on our platform, but in retrospect I think it was not worth it for us. I think integrating third-party logins makes sense if you know that most of your target users come from a given platform or your application wants to interact with a specific platform (e.g. a Github integration).

Otherwise the points the author makes seem painfully correct from our experience. Adding third-party sign-in immediately complicates the frontend as you need to support OAuth/OpenID-Connect workflows that are much more complicated than sending a password & e-mail combination (and possibly an OTP token) to a backend and reading the result. In addition, even though OAuth/OpenID-Connect are standardized it seems that almost every provider has decided to add its own quirks to it, so you can almost never just reuse the same code for integrating e.g. Github and Gitlab sign-ins.

What we currently do is to always add an e-mail using the third-party provider and use that to allow a password reset or password creation. You have to be quite careful with this as well though unless you want to open new security isues. Incorrectly implemented sign-in workflows via third-party providers can open avenues for account takeovers if you implement e-mail validation or account reconciliation incorrectly (e.g. an adversary might register an account with the victim's e-mail on a third-party platform and try to use that to sign into the victim's account; if the sign-in flow is configured incorrectly [happens a lot] the system will recognize the e-mail and sign the attacker into the victim's account).

Also, don't trust any validated information from third-party providers (especially e-mail addresses), as this can provide another attack vector. Always do your own validation.

mojuba• 6 years ago

3rd party logins have the advantage that sharing content from within your app on those social platforms becomes less of a friction unfortunately - if that's what your app relies on.

Email-only logins work fine with technical users, but non-technical ones absolutely suck at maintaining their logins and passwords. You lose users because they can't login for whatever stupid reason - one of the thousand stupid reasons - and they turn away to never come back, or they register afresh. This is the reality and yes, 3rd party auth is beneficial for popular (non-techie) services.

As for Apple Sign-in, haven't tried it on the development side yet but I can imagine it reduces friction even further and makes the user experience even nicer. This may be such a big bonus for your service that you may ignore the fact that you can't always collect your users' real email addersses. Find other ways to communicate: in-app messaging for example. If the user deletes your app then retargeting via email won't help much anyway - they will mark you as spam and overall it will probably do more harm than good, I think.

kolla• 6 years ago

It's a grocery list app, how much customer support do they have to do!? Feels like they just really really want to have my email.

mahnouel2• 6 years ago

Wouldn't their problem be solved by using usernames?! Usernames are easy to remember, share and setup.

amelius• 6 years ago

As a user, I won't be supporting them either.

Just give me sign in without involvement of a third party.

LockAndLol• 6 years ago

How long till it becomes mandatory by Apple? I give it a year. Then they'll say "our users expect it, so now we do" and it won't matter if that's true or not.

TheRealDunkirk• 6 years ago

We’re a small company that makes money when people like our app and pay for it. We do not make money with creepy tracking or by selling your information. When you provide us with your email address, it is never sold, shared, or used to invade your privacy.

You're the only one, then.

What's happening here is another revolution. Email spam got so bad, that Congress actually passed a law. Which, of course, did almost nothing. People got so tired of spam, that they avoided email, and allow the services to silently remove 90% of the crap.

This has now spilled over into voice calls, where it got so bad, so quickly, actual legislation was considered again. But people quickly realized that their phone contained a curated whitelist. Now, I never answer unless the number is recognized, and I think most people are doing the same.

Texting is also similarly whitelisted.

At this point, email systems and clients need to start with the assumption of whitelisting. Instead of just a "spam" folder with obvious crap, and controls to flag or unflag messages in that folder, we also need a "questionable" folder, with controls to mark as "known" or "unknown", as well as "spam". Emails shouldn't make it to my inbox unless they pass BOTH the whitelist AND the spam check.

onyva• 6 years ago

> Third-party login systems like Sign in with Apple cause many user experience and customer support headaches.

It’s not. It’s perfectly slick , simple and powerful and even non technical user can use. Please enable.

oramit• 6 years ago

After reading the article and comments i'm honestly a bit baffled.

Why is email address obfuscation an important component of online privacy? There are so many other more invasive and pernicious privacy concerns to worry about. It seems like we're spending an enormous amount of time to build far more complex authentication systems that are brittle and confusing just to avoid sharing an email address. Why?

Email addresses are supposed to be semi-public. If I share it with you I want you to contact me. People do abuse this, of course, but the open nature of it is exactly its best quality. I can sign up for new services easily, they can contact me, and if they bother me I block them.

I've had the same email address for almost 20 years now and have never had issues managing it. I cannot say the same for Facebook connect and Google Auth. I actively avoid signing up for services if I have to use a 3rd party auth service.

ric2b• 6 years ago

An e-mail address is as close to a unique id of a user as you can get online.

It makes cross-site/service tracking very easy.

martini333• 6 years ago

cry me a river

neop1x• 6 years ago

I support their decision. They shouldn't be dictating developers which SSO services to use or not. It's developer's app not Apple's.

doggydogs94• 6 years ago

AnyList does not like Sign In with Apple (and others), but they helping with the sign on jungle.

Why we won’t be supporting Sign in with Apple

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