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Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

bradfrost.com

131–140 of 520 posts

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#131
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the benefit of doing it that way?

Makes you use the password manager credentials to access your login credentials for other services. Works to stop nosy coworkers, siblings, spouses, etc.

Not sure I understand your point here. You need to use your password manager credentials to autofill also (at least for 1Password). The only reason to copy/paste is if you don't think your password manager will put the right info into the right boxes.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#132
post #113

This seems like brad coming up with a list of things that annoy him, without any data to back it up. I also like using password managers, but all that really matters are the results that services get from different flows. Magic links, for example, have almost certainly been a/b tested by the services using them, and most likely lead to better outcomes. There are a lot of genuine issues with passwords that password ma…

I think you and Brad are making different arguments. I think you're both right in different ways.

You're correct that convenience features like this, despite undermining password managers and interrupting power-user security practices, create positive business outcomes. Ditto for things that win A/B tests.

But user experience != business experience. Positive business outcomes don't imply that users are being maximally well served under the winning system. Example: anything by Comcast or Verizon.

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Separately, I believe in the case of Notion specifically, their use of emailed unique strings in place of passwords is a security decision made by them to avoid storing credentials, which they consider riskier than the magic links. While I find this tedious as well, I respect the decision and it's not a frequent PITA.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#133

It's 2019 and we're still doing email based signups, by default. What's wrong with this industry? OpenId was a pretty neat idea twelve years ago. And given the amount of password databases getting compromised, quite many websites would have been better off federating identity with a competent provider. But no, world plus dog still outsources security to email providers like hotmail, gmail, or worse. Basically comprom…

> OpenId was a pretty neat idea twelve years ago.

OpenId was maybe neat except for its little fatal flaw of being a single point of failure outside your control. Your provider decides your account should be taken down and suddenly you use access to everything.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#134
post #8

I would go further than this: don't get clever with logging in. Here's a list of "don't"s: - DON'T arbitrarily restrict my password from being too long - DON'T arbitrarily restrict me from using special characters - DON'T arbitrarily me require to use certain classes of characters (eg 1 uppercase, 1 lowercase and 1 number as a requirement; see https://xkcd.com/936/ ) - (this is a big one) DON'T TRY AND STOP ME PASTIN…

A good idea is just to follow NIST SP 800-63B rules and recommendations for passwords (“memorized secrets”) unless you have a really compelling reason to deviate from it. And to be extremely skeptical if you think you have such a reason. This actually includes all of your rules and others, such as excluding use of password hints and server-specified “security questions” (which are just a kind of weak password used to…

Do you have a good source for those rules in an easily digestible form?

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#135
post #39

There's been a recent tendency to split login forms into username/password over two screens as mentioned in this article. It's maddening. Password managers can't deal with this, unsurprisingly. I don't see the benefit this provides for anyone.

>Password managers can't deal with this, unsurprisingly. I use a password manager too and often wonder about this. Does this responsibility fall on the website's designer/developer or the password manager? In one hand, I'd like my password manager to work on every site too but on the other, being a web developer/designer, I don't want another thing to support. We already have browsers and browser versions, and browse…

As a developer you should support a proper form that works with password managers. Period. Anything else is a failure on the developer's part to create a working login. It's also a massive security hole you've introduced by encouraging people not to use password managers. They will try to remember the password and we all know where that leads to. Sorry, if you think you can develop a login form that doesn't support password managers and call that a decent effort, you're badly mistaken. That's just shit engineering.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is quite useful however with some federated auth flows, where you just need the email to see where to send them for the actual auth (e.g. Office365 and SAML login), otherwise you'd needlessly be entering your password. I also much prefer it to the previous way e.g. Office365 worked, where once you'd tabbed away from the email box, they'd detect you needed to be redirected and send you off, whilst most people had…

Pretty sure that is why... you enter your username and it checks to see what authentication flow to use, if it's a password flow then you get a password screen. Pisses me off too

Bingo. This is why we went with a stepped process. Did you log in with Google, Twitter, Enterprise SSO, or Email? Do you even have an account, maybe you need to create one?

It frustrated everyone.

Since we've implemented the stepped process (and made other changes) complaints have all but disappeared, and the number of failed sign in attempts has been significantly reduced, successful logins has increased slightly, and overall login attempts dropped.

It's not perfect, but all indicators are it's better than a screen full of options - it allows us to guide users to the correct action.

Sure, it can still be annoying, but less so than what it was.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#137

It's 2019 and we're still doing email based signups, by default. What's wrong with this industry? OpenId was a pretty neat idea twelve years ago. And given the amount of password databases getting compromised, quite many websites would have been better off federating identity with a competent provider. But no, world plus dog still outsources security to email providers like hotmail, gmail, or worse. Basically comprom…

Webauthn is creeping along gradually. Things like fingerprints and browser accounts should eventually be added to it as auth mechanisms and it will be glorious the day you just go to a website already signed in via your public keys that are available cross device automagically from your Mozilla / MS / Google / Apple account.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#138
post #113

This seems like brad coming up with a list of things that annoy him, without any data to back it up. I also like using password managers, but all that really matters are the results that services get from different flows. Magic links, for example, have almost certainly been a/b tested by the services using them, and most likely lead to better outcomes. There are a lot of genuine issues with passwords that password ma…

"All that really matters are the results that services get from different flows."

That's definitely not all that matters.

"you can so easily get real data?"

"Real data"... on subjective matters. Your attitude seems entirely the target audience of this article.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny how trends shift. A few years ago there was a glutton of articles telling us that we cannot do authentication correction, and to just offer single-sign-on via Facebook/Google instead. Now everyone is back to doing their own home-grown, and Facebook/Google authentication is seen as bloat.

Rather than trends, I picture waves of bad advice that surge forward and then are slowly retracted.

Which is exactly what "trend" means.

Re: Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

#140
> don’t put logins in modals

LastPass fills out my username and password on modals just fine. Tested it out on Hertz just now. If other password managers don't... then they should be improved, no?

Why should a site bother with a slower page load when an instant modal works just fine, as long as it's properly implemented?

> don’t split login across multiple pages

I've never seen this done except when it's necessary because depending on the account identifier (username) a different authentication method is used -- e.g. redirecting to your institution's authentication page.

Of course if you have a direct account you have no idea and it just seems annoying. But it is a feature, not a bug.

I'm not convinced the author has really done their full research here.

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