I have an app at work that supports Sign In With Apple so that users can create accounts and have their data synced to servers.
A couple of years ago one of the users created an account using Sign In With Apple, choosing to use Hide My Email as well (so that their email that the app received looks like *****@privaterelay.appleid.com).
The legacy in-house backend of the app unfortunately uses email addresses as user identifiers with the unlucky assumption that emails remain the same. The app doesn't offer users the ability to change email addresses.
The user in question recently reported that since very recently they are no longer able to use the app. It turns out that their Sign In With Apple email address for my app had changed at some point. They shared an iPhone screenshot of their Sign In With Apple settings for the app. The screenshot says that they created an account for this app two years ago, but the email address in the "This app received" field is different to one that they initially signed up with, and it's also a Hide My Email address.
It's important to note that this app was also transferred between developer accounts about a year ago, and since then this user, including thousands of other users didn't have issues using Sign In With Apple.
So my main question is: in what scenario it's possible for the email associated with a Sign In With Apple account for an app to change without creating a new account?
Hi @vadimbelyaev,
Yes, the emails provided by Sign in with Apple can change without creating a new account on the client. The expectation is for your clients to use the user identifier to identify the user account in your database—the user identifier is unique and static for your developer team. The private email addresses remain unchanged for your developer account, but the user may elect to stop forwarding their email, or decide to use their real email address.
Please see the Apple Support page below to learn more:
Manage your apps with Sign in with Apple
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102571
When the email changes for a user account, we send a server-to-server notification for the event. You can learn more about configuring these notifications below:
Processing changes for Sign in with Apple accounts https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple/processing_changes_for_sign_in_with_apple_accounts
Cheers,
Paris X Pinkney | WWDR | DTS Engineer
