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Apple Develops External Sign-In for Websites

You’ve heard of “Sign in with Facebook,” now try the new Apple flavor.

At Apple’s annual developer conference, the company outlined all sorts of new iterations of their tech, as well as updates to their ever-growing iOS framework. A new development, set to be deployed with the release of iOS 13, is an external sign-in function for certain websites.

On lots of sign-in pages around the internet, you’ve probably seen those buttons that let you sign in (or sign up) with Facebook or Google. Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi threw a spot of shade at external sign-ins, saying it “can be convenient, but it also can come at the cost of your privacy — your personal information sometimes gets shared behind the scenes and these logins can be used to track you.” To this end, Apple has developed their own external sign-in that allows users to log into third party sites with their Apple ID or Face ID in a process that shares no user data behind the scenes. Apparently, this function can also be used to hide one’s email address when signing up for sites and services; you can use a randomly generated Apple address as a “relay” that will receive email related to the site and forward it to you. If you’re tired of hearing from that site, just turn ’em off, and they’ll never find you.

It’s good that we’re getting new and creative ways to protect our stuff on the internet, though it does come with the caveat that it’s all going to have to pass through Apple at least once. But I guess if you use Apple products a lot, that probably doesn’t bother you much.

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