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Showing posts from July 15, 2020

The missing guide to OAuth 2.0

The modern human likely has profiles on dozens of applications. Whether it’s social media applications, music/video streaming, or workspace resources, each of us must manage accounts that contain personal information. Over time, these siloed applications have become increasingly connected. Twitter allows news sites to directly tweet, Discord searches Facebook for suggested friends, and Jira creates user accounts using Github profiles. This trend of allowing applications to talk to each other on your behalf is called “Delegated Access” and has become a necessary part of our online lives. However, because of the way these applications protect their data, developers run into a challenge:  How  do we delegate access? Almost every application is protected by a basic username/password schema. To allow Application A to access the data it needed from Application B would require constantly logging into Application B on behalf of Application A - how unwieldy! The workaround was to give Applicati