App Rejected on 17.2 clause. Asking for email ID

Question

My app is a sync solution (imagine dropbox). The user needs to sign in to access the app's features, and if he does not have any account already created, he can sign up.

The sign up asks for email id verification, and this email id is also used if the user has forgotten his password to send him one.

but Apple has rejected this app saying:

17.2: Apps that require users to share personal information, such as email address and date of birth, in order to function will be rejected

We found that your app requires customers to register with personal information to access non-account-based features, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

Apps cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app features and content that are not associated specifically to the user. User registration that requires the sharing of personal information must be optional or tied to account-specific functionality. Additionally, the requested information must be relevant to the features.

Although guideline 11.6 of the App Store Review Guidelines requires an application to make subscription content available to all the iOS devices owned by a single user, it is not appropriate to force user registration to meet this requirement; such user registration must be made optional.

It would be appropriate to make it clear to the user that registering will enable them to access the content from any of their iOS devices, and to provide them a way to register at any time, if they wish to later extend access to additional iOS devices

Please help me solve this. Many apps like dropbox/facebook require login. I don't get the exact reason why they rejected my app.

Also, please guide about the in app purchase, why registering cannot be mandatory

Answer 1

Asked App Store Review people for clarification on their rejection. They accepted it. and the app got approved :D Its on Appstore now :)

Answer 2

I also Faced this kind of Problem and my app also Rejected due to this.And Again I Changed my App flow Like User Registration will be Optional. User can See all the Feature of the app with out Registration by skipping this step.If he want to do something user-specific then you can ask to register such as : (user like,comment,photo upload etc) or else he can use the contents and features which are public.

in Case of in-app Purchase You can Prompt user that if He will Register with your app he can able to use this Content in his all devices.

It would be appropriate to make it clear to the user that registering will enable them to access the content from any of their iOS devices, and to provide them a way to register at any time, if they wish to later extend access to additional iOS devices