Apple Says Apps Supporting Account Creation Must Offer Account Deletion Starting Early Next Year

[Pro Apple Silicon]

I'm curious as to why anyone would "delete" an account with a random service, and what they actually think happens when they do.

Companies are still going to maintain records of you having existed at some point. You might not have an active login. Your email might not come up when you search for it. But you're not "erased".

 

[Mantahoe]

Thaaaaank you!

 

[BWhaler]

Wonderful. Thank you Apple.

 

[fmillion]

In an alternate universe, AOL is shaking in its boots because they don't want to be forced to allow users to cancel their service...

In all seriousness, I can see some potential problems with this. You absolutely should be able to delete your account, but 1) some situations may put people in a position to not understand the implications (if I delete my Google account, I would then also by design be "deleting" any other account tied to it with SSO), and 2) any company can simply mark an account as "deleted", very much like how filesystems just mark files as deleted but the data persists. And of course, 3) if you're "signing up" for a private service, e.g. at your employer (even though it's using a publicly available app), you might not necessarily have permission to remove your account. (If you use Slack at work, your employer probably should be allowed to restrict you from deleting your Slack account in their workspace, even though you might sign up for it in the app.)

Another problem case would be apps that connect to self-hosted systems. If you self-host a cloud service like Nextcloud, and the app lets you sign up for new accounts, does the app also have to require the server admin to allow account deletion from the app?

 

[Mr. Jenkins]

That's good. These apps tend to hide their "cancel account" and unsubscribe buttons. I've often had to call into several customer support lines just to figure out how to cancel an account or stop the auto renewal or unsubscribe.

 

[winxmac]

Glad this is going to be an enforced option.



Facebook does provide a deletion option.

It's not easy to find... I had to DuckDuckGo the direct link to delete a Facebook account...

 

[Populus]

Great Apple, great move.

 

[BigBlur]

SiriusXM is shook

Lol, they are the worst. I ended up switching my account to use a $50 pre-paid Visa debit/gift card...then spent all the money. They finally got the message.

On another note, could apps just direct people to create an account on the web instead of through the app to circumvent this requirement? (Similar to how you need sign up and pay for Netflix outside of their app.)

 

[JetLaw]

This is definitely a good thing and I think it's a justifiable area where Apple can throw its weight around in order to make the digital world better for users.

 

[Appleman3546]

I'm in support of this, it is a good data protection measure that is a no brainer win for consumers and allows developers to focus on active users

 

[gsurf123]

Now let's see what kind of jackasses come out of the woodwork to protest this and say it is somehow hurting users.

Apple continues to do all the stuff we need to get to a level playing field with these shady companies.

 

[TheOldChevy]

It should be a legal obligation. Closing should be at least as easy as opening an account.

 

[Nabby]

So how does one delete their iCloud account?

Data & Privacy

privacy.apple.com

You can also download all of your data that Apple utilizes from there as well.

 

[cmaier]

I'm curious as to why anyone would "delete" an account with a random service, and what they actually think happens when they do.

Companies are still going to maintain records of you having existed at some point. You might not have an active login. Your email might not come up when you search for it. But you're not "erased".

Then they are violating EU law.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I'm curious as to why anyone would "delete" an account with a random service, and what they actually think happens when they do.

Companies are still going to maintain records of you having existed at some point. You might not have an active login. Your email might not come up when you search for it. But you're not "erased".

To stop paying for it I would imagine this is a not so subtle shot at companies that don’t set up subscriptions through Apple specifically because it’s more difficult to cancel the subscription. If Netflix has to remove your account at your request, that effectively ends the subscription as well.

 

[Pro Apple Silicon]

Then they are violating EU law.

No I don't think so. Even GDPR cannot and does not prevent companies from retaining the fact that you once did business with them. There are records. It may not be an account record in an account table anymore, but there are records. It would be silly to think otherwise.

 

[cmaier]

No I don't think so. Even GDPR cannot and does not prevent companies from retaining the fact that you once did business with them.

If it’s personally identifiable information, then yes it does.

Do we always have to delete personal data if a person asks?

Grounds on which an organisation can refuse, or not, to delete a citizen’s personal data under the EU’s data protection law.

ec.europa.eu

 

[Wildkraut]

LOL and Apple also should support Account deletion, finger pointing is easy. Once you request a AppleID deletion, you can’t re-create a new Account with the same AppleID. In other words, Apples account deletion is not a deletion, it’s just a deactivation.

 

[cmaier]

LOL and Apple also should support Account deletion, finger pointing is easy. Once you request a AppleID deletion, you can’t re-create a new Account with the same AppleID. In other words, Apples account deletion is not a deletion, it’s just a deactivation.

No, it’s a deletion. The only thing they keep is the appleID, and the reason they don’t allow it to be used again is because they don’t want someone to scoop it up and impersonate you. They are doing you a favor.

 

[Xtir]

Facebook?

They tested that feature recently.. it nearly succeeded in wiping out the facebook group.

 

[Wildkraut]

No, it’s a deletion. The only thing they keep is the appleID, and the reason they don’t allow it to be used again is because they don’t want someone to scoop it up and impersonate you. They are doing you a favor.

99.9% of all AppleIDs contains name.surname, so they at least keep records of valid ex. customer names, which is a kind of privacy insult. Freeing it up after a few months, just like mobile providers do with existing phone numbers would be an acceptable way. Anyway, this system is built to fail, due to name.collisions@icloud.com.

 

[cmaier]

99.9% of all AppleIDs contains name.surname, so they at least keep records of valid ex. customer names, which is a kind of privacy insult. Freeing it up after a few months, just like mobile providers do with existing phone numbers would be an acceptable way. Anyway, this system is built to fail, due to name.collisions@icloud.com.

If you use name.surname as an account name you have no expectation of privacy in that - you are, after all, giving that out to others.

And there’s a big difference between recycling a phone number and an icloud account. The amount of damage I can do by grabbing up an icloud account name could be tremendous.

 

[Blue Nova]

Yes, that needed to happen long time ago.
I was trying to delete RoboKiller from my subscription on iPhone, but it won’t, it will say Expired and gives you a quick option to resubscribe, but not to remove from the whole iPhone..finely my carrier AT&T, helped me. But it was a long process. The App continued to work on my behalf by intercepting some calls randomly, and sending me a message that they have answered a call for me but my App was unreachable and need to check a link to their website.
I hope no one has to go through like I did.
Robokiller was good the first two years, but now, it’s not doing it’s job.

 

[Wildkraut]

If you use name.surname as an account name you have no expectation of privacy in that - you are, after all, giving that out to others.

And there’s a big difference between recycling a phone number and an icloud account. The amount of damage I can do by grabbing up an icloud account name could be tremendous.

Following your logic, the invalidation of phone numbers is even worse, with all the new fancy 2FA through SMS messages linked to it, the AppleID security even builds on it. There is no failsafe. Anyway i doubt Apple deletes all records, but since we don’t have access to Apples internal database yet, we can’t prove and must wait for a whole database leak, just like the Twitch one.

 

[ZMacintosh]

It would be nice if Apple had a way to merge multiple apple ids into one including purchases, etc