Roger Fingas
"Sign in with Apple," launching alongside this fall's iOS 13, will make it harder for advertisers and other parties to track people — but data collection is possible, a report indicated on Thursday.
Apple's use of one-off email addresses for each login is meant to limit how much data a company can collect, and allow people to sever ties at will. But, at present, it isn't clear how much it will slow down enterprise or data aggregators.
"With that type of solution, our match rate will be decreasing for sure," Arm Treasure Data CTO Kazuki Ota explained to TechRepublic.
That being said, companies like Treasure Data already have technology that can "clean" and unify multiple IDs under a single profile, Ota continued. This matters because people often interact with multiple brands under the same corporate umbrella, giving that parent business the ability to piece together information about location, demographics, and habits.
"It won't be perfect, to be honest, because 100% clean data is almost an imaginary situation," Ota remarked.
Apple has explicitly marketed Sign in with Apple as a privacy-minded alternative to login services by Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others. The company has come under fire for not only making it mandatory when those third-party services are offered, but even asking that its own button be placed above all others.
The OpenID Foundation has pointed out that Apple's technology bears a lot of similarities with OpenID Connect, but has serious gaps affecting security and development.
William Gallagher
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Andrew O'Hara
20 Comments
Instead of Congress complaining about Apple they should go after all these data
stealersaggregators. How is this even being allowed to be a business? This is just as bad as patent trolls. I'd like to see Apple include malware in "sign in with Apple" so every time a data aggregator grabs login information it starts building a massive malware bot that takes down all these companies. I see no problem with this since these companies will be grabbing information about me without my permission.Yes companies can piece data together from various sources this is nothing new, they been doing it since at least 2000. I will give you a quick example, Bought a new 99 ford, graduated with MBA in 2002, got a mailing from Ford saying as new graduate I qualified for first time new car buyer loan and i could also trade in my 99 Ford which was financing through Ford. Ford knew I graduated from college and knew I owed a Ford but could not figure out I was not qualitied for first time new car buy since I already owned a new Ford the Ford loan of .99% was less than the first time buyer loan of 2.99%.
All Apple is promising is that Apple will not share any information about what sites you are logging into using their ID. But those sites can still use other information about you they can pull from you when you access their website. Unlike Facebook and Google who will aggregate all this information and share with anyone winning to pay them.
Great so I'll still get targetted ads, only some of them will be mis-targetted to my neighbour.
The OpenID Foundation has pointed out that Apple's technology bears a lot of similarities with OpenID Connect, but has serious gaps affecting security and development.
Given its membership (https://openid.net/foundation/sponsoring-members/) I regret that I have to take any pronouncement from this source with a large grain of salt.