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Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

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Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#161

Post by chickenpotpie »

yannoninator wrote: post #144
mynameisvlad wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole comment thread is about not outsourcing your user management stack to a third party and your intended suggestion is.... A different third party? I don't think I understand exactly what your argument is.

You said: > Sure, because “do passwordless emails” is just a snap of the finger away, right? And I showed it literally is. The choice is yours to reimplement this authentication system, but in terms of "a snap of the finger away", You can do that, That is all. I've done these type of systems before at scale and it took minutes to do (works just like a password reset mechanism) and it is very trivial. In your original…

Top comment: why would you trust a 3rd party with accounts?

Next Comment: Because they are better at security

Your comment: Or you can do passwordless yourself and have no security problems

Next comment: You can't just do passwordless with a snap of the finger

Your comment: Yeah just use a 3rd party

You're incorrect about the thread

Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#162

Post by iovoid »

tootie wrote: post #26
taytus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my question as well. It's an honest question and hopefully someone can educate me. Why would anyone trust a third party with what is the most important asset, their users? Thank you in advance.

I can answer with the opposite question. Why would you trust your homemade solution instead of heavily invested experts? Auth0 (and Okta and a thousand others) do nothing but auth and customer management and do it at 1000X the scale as most enterprises. They do it way better than your IT team could possibly do it. And support every cutting edge feature and potential use case. You can also get them to absorb indemnity…

You can have both (control over your data and expert backing) if you use open source solutions with an enterprise support plan (RedHat's model).

Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#163

Post by mynameisvlad »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #161
yannoninator wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said: > Sure, because “do passwordless emails” is just a snap of the finger away, right? And I showed it literally is. The choice is yours to reimplement this authentication system, but in terms of "a snap of the finger away", You can do that, That is all. I've done these type of systems before at scale and it took minutes to do (works just like a password reset mechanism) and it is very trivial. In your original…

Top comment: why would you trust a 3rd party with accounts? Next Comment: Because they are better at security Your comment: Or you can do passwordless yourself and have no security problems Next comment: You can't just do passwordless with a snap of the finger Your comment: Yeah just use a 3rd party You're incorrect about the thread

Ok it’s not just me then. I felt like I was taking crazy pills when reading the replies, and the ones to the sibling comment thread where they pivoted to talking about personal security with magic links when this entire conversation has been about companies implementing user management solutions.

Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#164

Post by f430 »

ketzo wrote: post #80
f430 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sort of like "economic moat"...yeah I can definitely see why AWS is quickly becoming a monopoly. 10 years ago? I might have used Clerk, I guess I'm not seeing what the value proposition here is to me its: Do I trust a new service or continue with one of the most trusted service from AWS?

Yeah, definitely. It's a phenomenal virtuous cycle for AWS. I think that honestly, the biggest sell for a lot of newcomers is gonna be "you don't need to know AWS!" -- in my (very limited!) experience, if you want to do X with AWS, you're gonna need to learn how to do W, Y, Z, and maybe A and B with AWS too.

it's a tough sell imho because AWS has a learning curve but I feel like most devs are okay with being enmeshed for building scalable and secure systems on top of it.

AWS moves so quickly I think it would be a disadvantage to rely on a smaller, unknown 3rd party that tries to replace itself as AWS.

Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#166

Post by yannoninator »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #159
yannoninator wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The topic of discussion was you claimed passwordless security had no security issues and I pointed out possible security issues. But you claimed that the email can be hacked, I used an email forwarding service provided by google or apple. So are you saying I can be hacked through this way, please provide evidence of this happening in a real world passwordless scenario. > An individual can mitigate them, but they st…

> But you claimed that the email can be hacked, I used an email forwarding service provided by google or apple. I'm not arguing than an intelligent user can't get rid of security issues. I'm saying a product that uses passwordless login still has security issues. Not every user is going to do that and theyre gonna blame you when they get hacked. > Again, I would be more convinced of real world evidence and statistics…

> I'm not arguing than an intelligent user can't get rid of security issues. I'm saying a product that uses passwordless login still has security issues.

Like what? you keep saying "still has security issues", but you don't give any real world examples. Just saying "still has security issues" is not a good argument.

> You first.

Lots of companies use this method in the real world, Slack, Medium, Freetrade, Substack, Monzo (a bank) and many more.

If a bank and a stock trading app is comfortable using this method, I am sure they are comfortable with the security of this method.

In addition, I already have given examples in this thread which you willingly choose to ignore.

Your turn, start with this:

> Forwarding email increases risk of being hacked. They only have to get one of the emails to get into my account.

Proof?

Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#167

Post by jokethrowaway »

nautilus12 wrote: post #40

I'm waiting for SaaSaaS. SaaS as a service.

Saasify, but they want 20% of your business

I don't think this model works, as small indie devs trying to do SaaS won't pay well enough and drown you in support and anything more than a mid company trying to do SaaS will reimplement their own (badly but good enough) in a month.

Saasify with a few millions funding and a hundreds of sales could do ok, but investors are throwing money on other things these days.

Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#168

Post by [deleted] »

jerrac wrote: post #138

So, first, congrats on launching your product. :) Personally, I don't have a need for it, and if I did, I'd be very reluctant to use a proprietary service, but I'm sure there are companies out there who will be happy to use you. Good luck! ------------ That said, maybe the HN community can answer something I've wondered about... Why isn't there an Open Source, standardized, self-hosted, version of this kind of servic…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Clerk – all of user management as-a-service, not just authentication

#169

Post by digaozao »

SahAssar wrote: post #140
jerrac wrote: post #138

So, first, congrats on launching your product. :) Personally, I don't have a need for it, and if I did, I'd be very reluctant to use a proprietary service, but I'm sure there are companies out there who will be happy to use you. Good luck! ------------ That said, maybe the HN community can answer something I've wondered about... Why isn't there an Open Source, standardized, self-hosted, version of this kind of servic…

I haven't tried it but https://www.keycloak.org/ (by redhat) seems close to what you describe.

I have been using it for a year. No problems so far, and found it to be really flexible
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