People who install iOS 16 on their iPhone or macOS Monterey on their Mac later this year will experience fewer issues when logging into websites and apps. captchas† Via a captcha, a user must prove that he is not a robot, for example by indicating which images a bicycle can be seen on.
Captchas, aka completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart, come in different forms. It used to be a distorted string of letters and numbers that had to be typed over. Nowadays, for example, you have to recognize the difference between multiple objects or simply tick a box that says you are not a robot.
At its developer conference WWDC 2022, Apple showed a technique for iOS 16 that can avoid these puzzles. The option is called Automatic Verification and was created together with internet companies Cloudflare and Fastly.
It works with an underlying system called Private Access Tokens. This uses iCloud to verify a user’s Apple ID and the device being used. That information is turned into a token in the background that provides proof of humanity, without having to solve a captcha first.
Apple says that this technique does not share sensitive user data and that the company also does not know who is skipping the captchas. Also no IP addresses are registered.
The free updates for the operating systems of the iPhone and Macs will be released in the fall. Public test versions have already been published.