Apple wants you to stop signing in to apps with Facebook or Google

Apple is rolling out its own system for signing into apps as a replacement for those offered by Facebook and Google.

During the 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple announced its new "Sign in with Apple" feature, which developers can put into apps to allow users to log in using Face ID authentication.

Craig Federighi, Apple's software engineering senior vice president, upon making this announcement put up on screen images of Facebook and Google log-in buttons, saying they can be "convenient" but can "also come at the cost of your privacy," as "your personal information sometimes gets shared behind the scenes."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

With Apple's sign-in feature, though, Federighi said users will be able to sign in easily "without all the tracking" and "without revealing any new personal information." Apple said that with apps that ask for an email address, users have the option of sharing it, but Apple will also provide a "hide my email" option. Those who select this will have information from the app sent to an automatically generated email address, with Apple forwarding emails from this fake address to a user's real address. A different email address will be generated for every app.

Apple's sign-in announcement received among the most positive reactions of the keynote event, which Federighi took note of by observing, "A lot of love for random addresses here!" TechCrunch editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino observed this was "the biggest middle finger to tracking services and social sign ons."