Apple offers new sign-in feature to verify user IDs

Apple is rolling out a “Sign in with Apple” feature to its computers, tablets and phones, allowing users to verify their identities without having to use Facebook or Google.

The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant — which continues to attack its Silicon Valley rivals on privacy issues — said Monday the new feature generates anonymous email addresses that users can employ to sign in with apps that request an email address.

The anonymous email addresses then forward messages from the app to the users’ real emails.

“It’s a fast, easy way to sign in without all the tracking,” Apple’s VP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, said.

It was a not-so-subtle jab at Facebook and Google, which have minted their fortunes partly by tracking their users’ behavior all over the internet.

At Apple’s yearly Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC, Federighi echoed boss Tim Cook by calling privacy ”a fundamental human right” and saying Apple bakes it “into everything that we do.”

Federighi likewise bragged that Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, does not save voice clips from users — unlike Amazon’s Alexa.

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