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Comment by cj | Hacker News Reader

With 3rd party cookies going away, companies now need your email address to effectively track you.

Tracking you via your email address is actually better than using cookies (for the advertiser) because it works cross-device and cross-browser.

Any mechanism that makes it easier to login to sites will promote the usage of email addresses for tracking purposes. Think retargeting and conversion tracking (no longer needing to be cookie-based).

Passkeys = quicker and faster to get a user's email address.

Email address = even better than "super cookies"

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But Apple offer this service where they make a fresh proxy email for you which is unique to the service. Why would they do that if they want to enable cross-service tracking via email address?

I use 1password + fastmail for exactly this. The integration is better than Apple IMHO.

Do 1password/fastmail have functionality built in for this or do you just manually generate your emails based off a wildcard?

Yes. It’s built-in. https://1password.com/fastmail/

That's awesome

> Passkeys = quicker and faster to get a user's email address.

Using passkeys doesn't give a site your email address. The site would have to still ask for your email separately.

> Tracking you via your email address is actually better than using cookies (for the advertiser) because it works cross-device and cross-browser.

At least in the EU, you'll need express consent to do this.

“Need” is a very strong word. Any potential fines will just be rolled into the costs of doing business, and if it’s found to still be worth it they’ll keep abusing user privacy as there is a net benefit profit-wise.

IIRC, the fines are some % of revenue. Basically enough to tap into margins.

Up to 4% of global turnover, so substantial.

From personal experience, businesses I've dealt with in the EU are eager to be compliant as long as it's applied across the board (ie, they aren't losing their competitive advantage).

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