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Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

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Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#101

Post by syrrim »

hellofunk wrote: post #93
a_imho wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to enter passwords because you are stuck in a password reset groundhog day scenario. You want to login to Medium yet you need to access your emails first, it makes very little sense actually.

> it makes very little sense actually It's actually one of the safest ways to offer email authentication.

Recall that the email requires some way to login, which is probably a password anyway. What do you gain in terms of security (rather than simplicity) by shifting responsibility onto the email provider?

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#102

Post by hellofunk »

syrrim wrote: post #101
hellofunk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it makes very little sense actually It's actually one of the safest ways to offer email authentication.

Recall that the email requires some way to login, which is probably a password anyway. What do you gain in terms of security (rather than simplicity) by shifting responsibility onto the email provider?

Most email providers already implement (and with very large user bases which provide testing) all the features you'd have to implement yourself for proper security, like 2fa, password encryption, password reset workflows. To implement all that yourself, highly likely you will not do it as robustly as another provider. Also very costly in time.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#103

Post by danielskogly »

Facebook login is all we have on Wishy.gift, which considering I really care about privacy, might seem weird.

We use the login to auth, seed display name, and for the unique Facebook ID that we only store hashed. There's no analytics of any kind on the site, and except for the display name (which I'm planning on making editable) there's nothing to identify a user if somebody gets access to the database.

One of the things we want to achieve with the service, is to make it hard or very inconvenient to peek at what's been checked off in your own wishlist, and therefore we only use 1 service for login.

It was and still is a really difficult compromise between simplicity, the functionality of the service, and the privacy of our users - which includes my entire family, SO, SO's family, several friends, and many others.

Having reached 200+ users as well, I'm not really sure how we'd go about replacing it with something else as well.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#104

Post by web007 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #61
tootie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think password managers have as much penetration as you think and they only work on devices you own. Social login doesn't necessarily give up that much info. Your social network knows who logged in to. The third-party only gets whatever info you accede to which usually is just an email address or name. The huge bonus to users and site owners is that that site isn't storing a password for you. It's easy to scr…

I think you just made a case for DuckDuckGo or (e.g.) LastPass to provided an authentication servive. Mind you, products would have to adopt it. But from a sec + privacy perspective it makes sense to have a 3rd party whose biz model isn't to harvest your personal details.

This was OpenID, which lets you choose your third-party provider at will, or even self-host.

It's mostly dead now. People wanted the convenience of FB/GOOG/TWIT over the freedom of self-hosting.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#105

Post by pen2l »

f2n wrote: post #92
jfaucett wrote: post #76

All my side projects and any projects I control use exclusively social login. Here's why. 1. Its way easier on me. I don't have to worry about password resets or users hacking an account in the site. OAuth and be done. 2. I don't have to deal with any outgoing or incoming emails and complaints dealing with login. 3. I don't have to worry about scammers, since google/facebook pretty much require phone, a non fake emai…

I am unlikely to use your site if it requires me to use a Google or Facebook login. Those companies already have too much power to fuck my life up, I have no interest in giving them any more.

While I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint and to a large degree share it, you are among a vanishingly small minority to not use a site or service just because of social login. 'jfaucett probably is fine sacrificing losing this small minority.

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#106

Post by yowlingcat »

Jack000 wrote: post #12

32% username password 57% google rest facebook/twitter out of 7291 users, via auth0 (for my project brandmark.io)

Your project's awesome! Definite step up from a couple other tools that attempt to do the same thing. Came up with a couple good concepts for an idea I've been tooling around with for a while!

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#107

Post by nkkollaw »

hellofunk wrote: post #95
nkkollaw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tangentially related, I quite like Medium’s workflow where you don’t need to enter passwords anymore. You just enter your address, they send a login email, you click the link in your email, and it redirects you to Medium, logged in. That's absolutely crazy, I've always thought it didn't make any sense. Browsers have autofill, and even if you don't want to use it it takes a lot less time to type your password than t…

Think about it from the perspective of the site owner. Much safer to offer access this way, and easier, than having to manage and store and secure passwords. Much safer for users.

I'm not convinced.

For the site owner, they can even more easily pick social login.

As for safety, it's just as hard for a hacker to guess my email password then my website password, what is the difference? Not to mention that if my phone is around you might be able to see the URL from the lock screen, and if God forbid my phone (or even laptop, but it never happens) is unlocked my email client is accessible at all times without a password).

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#108

Post by paulsutter »

seveibar wrote: post #15

I'm a cofounder at CollegeAI.com. Our users can sign up via Facebook, Google or Email. Here are our stats: Google: 58% Email: 23% Facebook: 19% Most of our users are around 18yo.

Google is preferred because the one thing you know for sure is that nobody uses google+ so there’s no risk of unintended social leakage (have done surveys)

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#109

Post by petercooper »

adtac wrote: post #38

Curious: has anyone integrated Github login? What percentage of your users use Github?

We solely use GitHub logins on http://rubyflow.com but it's very much developer focused. This doesn't stop the spammers, however, who now all seem to have GitHub accounts too :-)

Re: Ask HN: What percentage of your users are using social login?

#110

Post by monk_e_boy »

f2n wrote: post #92
jfaucett wrote: post #76

All my side projects and any projects I control use exclusively social login. Here's why. 1. Its way easier on me. I don't have to worry about password resets or users hacking an account in the site. OAuth and be done. 2. I don't have to deal with any outgoing or incoming emails and complaints dealing with login. 3. I don't have to worry about scammers, since google/facebook pretty much require phone, a non fake emai…

I am unlikely to use your site if it requires me to use a Google or Facebook login. Those companies already have too much power to fuck my life up, I have no interest in giving them any more.

I was like you, until I looked at my unique login/pwd combinations.... there were so so many. I can't remember them all, i switch computers (I'm a teacher) a lot. Logins are so stupid, I've been able to look at my laptop to unlock it for years, touch my phone to unlock it.... login and passwords are going so i don't mind using google to log in for a few years while the rest of the world catches up.

For students google log in is essential. Having to create an account, then click a link in an email, then use a site is too hard. It takes too much time and there are too many points of failure. So 99% of comp sci teachers are choosing sites with social logins. So future programmers are all going to prefer them.

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