Thread

1. tgsovlerkhgsel · 1789535685 · focus · HN ↗

   This is really clever from Apple. The journalist use case is just the PR story. This will be really useful for identity verification and insurance apps, and has the potential to shift from "you need a smartphone to be able to live normally" to "you need an iPhone to be able to live normally".

   There are already plenty of insurances that require you to submit claims through a smartphone app that tries to essentially do this by capturing sensor metadata etc. - those don't need to be nation-state resilient, just Joe the Crackhead Insurance Scammer resilient, so this works. Likewise, more and more things online require identity verification (either officially or disguised as age verification).

   Edit: And while "a nation state actor can spoof this" is a problem for the journalism use case, the insurance/ID verification use cases are perfectly fine with anything that raises the bar but could be bypassed with enough effort. Also, the journalism use case suffers from the same fundamental issue all of these use cases suffer from: People will "verify" the picture by looking at the repost of a screenshot of the verification UI, not by verifying the original themselves.

   1. rickdeckard · 1789543712 · focus · HN ↗

      I don't understand the vector of this:

      An insurance would either assign #1 an insurance agent or mechanic to initially assess the damage (trusted) or #2 ask the customer to send pictures (untrusted).

      Tendency is #2 for cost-saving of the insurance, and 3rd party apps are used to execute this.

      Now the idea is that the insurance company discontinues the App and the (untrusted) customer must have an iPhone 18 Pro to make an insurance claim?

      Or is the insurance agent / mechanic an untrusted entity who will now be required to have an iPhone 18 Pro?

      What is the fraud vector here, and how can the insurance service provider continue cost-saving on damage-assessment by offloading to the customer, if the customer is required to own a specific device?

      1. yreg · 1789544751 · focus · HN ↗

         > Now the idea is that the insurance company discontinues the App and the (untrusted) customer must have an iPhone 18 Pro to make an insurance claim?

         In a couple of years it will be almost any iPhone instead of 18 Pro. And if it catches on, other phone vendors will provide a similar service.

         1. rickdeckard · 1789548531 · focus · HN ↗

            So the insurance would then, instead of contracting the current service-provider for the 3rd party app, contract also with Apple and, let's say Samsung?

            And then stop the 3rd party app which is vendor-agnostic and works on all devices?

            I'd say that's unlikely.

            IF that's an industry this Apple-feature will disrupt, it seems it will barely have an impact on the process of insurance companies themselves, but will actually disrupt the service-provider industry FOR insurances:

            The insurance won't be able to stop their existing 3rd party cost-saving, as it provides the largest device-coverage for offloading to the customer.

            Instead, either the insurance or the 3rd party service-provider will have to pay Apple in addition to make use of this feature, with the hopes that the provided data will reduce fraud.

            Which brings me back to my actual question: What is the fraud-vector here?

            1. Topfi · 1789551968 · focus · HN ↗

               > So the insurance would then, instead of contracting the current service-provider for the 3rd party app, contract also with Apple and, let's say Samsung?

               The industry has some extensive experience in independently verifying signatures, I don't see how the manufacturers factor in here. And for app features, just ask banks how integrating biometrics, payment services, etc. goes. Tends to be preferred, once Apple and Google Pay became fully available here in Austria, banks dropped their own NFC payment solutions in rapid succession.

               1. rickdeckard · 1789553163 · focus · HN ↗

                  Me neither, so your reply should be on the parent, because it states "And if it catches on, other phone vendors will provide a similar service."

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