DEV Community

Discussion on: When signing up or logging into an app, do you prefer OAuth (authentication w/social media account) or email sign up/sign in?

Collapse
 
rhymes profile image
rhymes

I use to prefer OAuth in the beginning.

I stopped after a while. I started disliking the idea of tying all my logins to the major players, this was more or less at the same time I started using password managers.

Notice that most OAuth based websites are either Google Login or Facebook Login.

I still think there's a purpose in OAuth, for example GitHub login makes perfect sense on a site like this one and OAuth is also great for one time passwords.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • are you requiring OAuth just because you don't want to handle the passwords? I've seen websites use OAuth only to fill in email and username but still requiring people to fill in the passwords (and thus I imagine creating a user account that worked on the "local website" with a tie-in to the access token)

  • if you require OAuth are you going to provide an alternative? Even Tinder had to implement a plan B because people didn't trust Facebook with their data

A lot of UI put Google and Facebook in front and center on their signup pages but still provide the possibility to sign up "the old way".

You might also lose customers that don't have social media in the first place...