Apple has filed for a patent (number 10,230,722) for “trusted status transfer between associated devices.” It involves secure methods for transferring data between your various Apple gadgets.
In the patent filing, Apple, notes that users are often required to sign in or otherwise register when they desire to access various services by way of their electronic devices. Such services can include, for example, cloud storage, downloadable media or content, subscription programming, e-mail, and the like.
Because it can be important to identify or confirm an actual user when providing these and other device based services, a sign in, registration, or other authentication of a user attempting to access such services can be required or preferable. Apple says that there’s a need for systems and techniques that authenticate added user devices in a more convenient manner than current methods.
Here’s Apple’s summary of the invention: “The embodiments set forth systems and techniques to authenticate a user device for device services, such as by transferring or extending a trusted device status from a separate and trusted associated user device, which can be paired with the user device. This can be done automatically without requiring the user to sign in at or on behalf of the user device, and the automated process can include verifying a trusted status for the associated user device, receiving data items from both devices, evaluating the data items, and facilitating an authentication of the user device when the evaluating returns a favorable result.
“Data items can include provisioned machine identifiers, temporally limited one-time user passwords, and a provisioned password reset key. Authentication or trusted device status transfer can be achieved by way of an authentication token that is given to the user device.”
Of course, Apple files for — and is granted — lots of patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many are for inventions that never see the light of day. However, you never can tell which ones will materialize in a real product.
