My question is almost the same as this one
only difference is that users has an option to register (provides his username and password).Users should only have one account registered, if the user has the same email I merged those accounts. and my application has another method for logging in which is via Facebook.
What I basically do is
When The User visits the for site for the first time, he or she then
gets created a User Account where the it only has Username ,password
and mail address after that third-party identity record is created
and then paired with the local account.however the Users table will
have an empty Username and password, but the email will be filled
with the users email that we have retrieved from the third party
service provider
And the Second Scenario
Users attempts Register to the site. check if email exist if the
email exist but it is registered using a third party account, Use
the user populated form and insert it to the user account paired
with the third party account, in short if the users email exist in the database I
will just merged the locally created account and the third party
account.
Now my question is my approach secure and credible? if not what is the best way to merge accounts and at the same time if the user registers with the same email(the one from the third party account) and he has a third party account, those account would be merge?
The way I look at this, there is only one account. One email, one account period. There might be various attributes associated with that account, like for e.g. linked to a set of OAuth credentials etc. But fundamentally there is only one account. If your user has registered once using a social account and then try to register again on your site, send them over to the social site which they used to register the first time and ask them to login there. Then log them into your site automatically. If the user has an account with your site and then tries to register again with a social account, tell them that you already have an account on the site and ask them to login. IMHO, keeping separate accounts and trying to merge them is a messy idea.
I would provide two sets of behavior, one when logged in and one when logged out.
When logged in, you provide the ability to link to new third-party accounts. For example, you sign up with email address and password, then log in, then you can link your Facebook account. To link your Facebook account you authorize with Facebook and then store the Facebook information in that user account record.
When logged out, you must log in with existing credentials. If, when logged out, you try to create an account with an existing email address, you either prevent the log in, saying "an account with that email address already exists", or you immediately challenge the user to log in to merge the account (in which case it works like the logged in case when linking an external account, only with the order of authentication operations reversed).
In case it's not clear from the above, I recommend having a single user account and a way to record linkages between that account and external accounts. You can do this in NoSQL buy just adding fields to the user document or you can do this relationally by having a table representing external accounts with a foreign key linking them to the user ID.
Beware not to use oAuth 2.0 !
The lead author himself resigned as it's not as safe as the 1.0 version.
You should prefer oAuth 1.0 or OpenID.
You can also have a look at Persona from Mozilla
Related
I'm building a website with a login and registration system where the users' information will be stored on a database. I'm implementing a standard e-mail verification step after the account creation. The process is the following: An account is created, but has a 'verified' flag set to False. Then, an e-mail is sent to the user with a link to verify the account. Finally, after the user clicks the link, the 'verified' flag is set to True.
This should be sufficient, but it got me thinking. What happens to the unverified accounts? Someone could set up millions of unverified accounts that fill up my database storage space and available usernames. This could be problematic.
Is there a way to build a similar system in which the account would only be stored in the database AFTER the verification?
One way to solve your "Problem" would be to use a Capchta at the registration and/or to delete all not-activated accounts when the registration date is further ago than x days.
You could encrypt all information of the registration in the verification link, instead of storing that information in a new user account.
When the user clicks the registration link, you would decrypt that information and create the account.
To keep the verification URL as short as possible, this would require to minimize the amount of information you request during registration. I would suggest to ask for the E-Mail only and to request all the other attributes on the verification page.
For my own gmail account, I have multiple email addresses associated with it. For example, I have an email address from my university that is associated with my gmail, and I can send emails from my gmail as if they are coming from my university email address.
I'm reading up on the Google APIs, and I see that I can get a user's gmail address, but can I also get any other email address that is associated with their gmail account?
When a user logs in to my site, I'd like to present them with a list of the gmail-associated email addresses and let them select the one they would like to use.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the answers, but I don't think any of them answers the question. I've been playing with Google's OAuth playground. It is strange that I can get lots of very personal information (a list of a user's contacts and even received emails) but I can't get the user's alternative email addresses.
Your description is a little vague. Are you talking about send-as alias accounts or alternate email accounts?
Send-as Alias
Either way, you can interact with the send-as accounts here: Manage Send-as Alias
Alternate Emails via Admin SDK
As for alternate email accounts, they can be accessed via:
Admin SDK: https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/directory/v1/guides/manage-user-aliases?hl=en
Google Apps Script: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/gmail/gmail-app#getAliases()
Additional info here on how the accounts work.
Email addresses associated with your account
Alternate email addresses and other Google products
Connect other email accounts to your Google Account
Federated Login
Also, I'm not exactly sure how you are trying to incorporate this functionality into your site but another area I recommend checking out is Federated Login for Google Account Users. This might also provide you with the functionality you seek.
Using federated login (also known as federated identity), your website
or application can allow visitors to sign in using their Google user
accounts. Federated login frees users from having to set up separate
login accounts for different websites, and frees you from the task of
implementing login authentication measures.
It has been a while since the question was asked. You can use the Google People API to get a user's primary email address and aliases. Here's the documentation. The scope you need to use is: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/user.addresses.read
This will return all the email addresses for the user and also tell you which is the primary one.
If you use OAuth to have your users sign-in with their Google accounts (with or without G+) the user will be prompted (by Google) to select which of their accounts they wish to authorize your application to use:
https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2Login
So to directly answer your question, I'm not aware of an API to return that list of users - however you shouldn't need to, Google will take care of this before returning to your application.
If your user is already logged in, and you wish to give them the ability to change the Google account they are using, I believe it is possible to prompt them again to select the account they are interested in (search for select_account on the link above).
This is possible. However, this has changed since Google announced the deprecation of their Google+ People API, which a lot of folks used to get all the email addresses for a user. The current most voted answer now goes to a 404.
Google Plus People API Replacement
Google has replaced the Google Plus People API /plus/v1/people/me with https://developers.google.com/people/ and you’ll want to use the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/user.emails.read profile scope as discussed here as a replacement. The schema is different, so you'll need to change your mapping as well.
If your app already used the following scopes from the old /plus/v1/people/me your user will not have to re-consent when you switch to the new API:
email
profile
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.login
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.me
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.profile.agerange.read
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.profile.emails.read
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.profile.language.read
We are looking to integrate Facebook, Google, Twitter into an existing site.
Unlike most implementations, the user MUST be a customer prior being able to login with Facebook, Google, etc. The current database design is as follows;
userid | username | password | customerno
So the idea is if a user decides to login using Facebook, we need to validate that they are also an existing customer using their customer number which is alphanumeric. Once authenticated, they are no longer required to authenticate using their customer number. If they are not yet a customer, they will first need to create an account with us.
Do I need to design a new table for each provider? If so what should the design look like?
How do I authenticate a user who has logged in using Facebook with their existing customer number?
How do I authenticate a user who has logged in using Facebook with their existing customer number?
That depends on what criteria you have to recognize someone as a customer …
IMHO the best and easiest way to connect Facebook users to existing accounts on some other page is the email address. If you don’t have that, and see no other reliable way to identify someone as a customer with the data that Facebook can provide – then maybe you could just ask the user for their customer id on your site before connecting their Facebook account.
As for your database design – if you read the email address on every connect/login, then you could just look that up to find your user id. Otherwise, you could either add extra fields to your existing user table, where you save someone’s Facebook/Google/... user id. But if you want to use multiple services, maybe it’d be better to put this data into a second table like
userid | foreign_user_id | type
where type would be one of 'facebook', 'google' etc. to identify the login provider that foreign_user_id comes from.
I've got a decent set of existing users on my website who login via their emailaddress as their username.
I'm setting up Facebook OAuth mechanism to allow new users to sign up more conveniently, but I'm not sure how to handle the scenario when a user who already has an email address registered with our system and now tries to login via Facebook.
Should I consider him the same user?
Should I treat him like a new user?
The situation is more complicated by the fact that I dont validate their email addresses (when they login directly into my system), so i cant assume they are the same user.
How do others resolve this conflict, or do other folks simply treat this user connecting via FB as a new entity?
On your login screen, users can have a choice: you may put
new user: signup using facebook
since this is a totally new user account, then you just need to do your facebook connect + request for email permission, etc.
existing user: login by email
Once they do this, let them login using the old-fashioned way. Then once signed in, prompt them to connect this email address to their facebook account. So the flow is login via email then optional facebook connect.
To do this, I assume you've added a field on your database table for user_accounts, that is facebook_user_id or fb_id or user_id, etc. Then on facebook connect, get the logged-in-email, UPDATE table SET fb_id = xxx WHERE email = xx
I've pondered the same issue. I think we'll go with the verified email (Facebook Connect) getting attached to and logged into the existing account with the same email.
Before we connect and log them in we'll explain that the account exist and ask for their password (they signed up using email and password, so they should know it) to ensure it's the right person.
If you support multiple external authentications (Google OAuth, Facebook etc) then you may not have a password, and in that case it gets slightly trickier.
If you do log them in to the existing account without asking for a password, make sure you clear existing sessions to avoid 'anticipation attacks', where an attacker anticipates that the target signs up, creates an account and keep the session after they've signed up and attached to the attackers existing account.
So there are definitely many tutorials out there regarding how to integrate various individual social network authentication/registration into existing user accounts. But the scenario I can't seem to find out much information about is if a user signs into your account with different social network credentials. For example:
Scenario #1
User registers on site using site's authentication.
User then signs in/registers on site using Facebook Connect.
User then signs in/registers on site using Twitter.
How do I integrate all of these into one account?
Obviously once a user is registered, they can add other social network associations in the account settings pages. But I am more concerned if they register via the other social network not remembering they are already setup.
My general thoughts are trying to figure out a way to use the "username" or email to try and guess and present the user a way to combine accounts right there.
Anyone have any thoughts?
following up -
if your users can't remember that they've signed up previously, well, best of luck to them in general ;)
much as you described, i'm planning on giving users the option to link additional accounts once they have signed in by one means or another.
but as far as cross-checking, there's only so much you can do. many social network APIs do indeed provide email addresses (once you've busted in through OAuth) but these may be accessible only if a user has elected to make his/her address public, which is not guaranteed.
also not guaranteed is that the user used the SAME email address for each social network account, so even if you manage to retrieve an address it may or not be of any use to you.
finally, if you find matching email addresses via such means, it might be advisable to prompt the user to link accounts rather than assume he/she wants this done automatically. some people like to maintain multiple personalities. i.e. "it looks like you are also signed up with twitter - do you want to link your accounts? it will make your life seem worth living."
you might consider offering incentives to link user accounts or to provide an email address (up to you of course to figure out what these might be, based on the functionality of your website).
solution i am working on, database-side, is to maintain multiple accounts and then if link information is discovered by various means, said link is indicated in a lookup table.
an alternative is once you find a link, attempt to combine all relevant entries for the multiple accounts into one account entity - all i can say about this latter approach is that i would do so with caution as there could be a formidable level of complexity depending on the user's activity level and the complexity of your database schema.
in my (mental/actual) namespace a user who registers the old-fashioned way has a 'standard' account and one who uses a social network has an 'alias' account. then the goal becomes to define where the alias is supposed to point, i.e. create the lookup such that a subsequent login via either means retrieves the relevant information for both accounts (with a preference for displaying personal data for the 'standard' account).
btw i figured out how to make twitter OAuth behave since my last post - you can look at my other answers for details if you're interested.
JB
hi matt,
i'm working on the same problem right
now.
assuming the user starts with regular
site account (which is not
necessarily safe to assume if he sees
all the pretty "connect with XXX
network" buttons!!!), you can use
either OAuth or the javascript APIs
(facebookConnect or #anywhere -
haven't fully figured out the latter
yet and i'm not sure I recommend it as
I don't think it provides as rich an
API as do the backend libraries) to
login to the other sites.
the APIs should return certain
information after a successful
login/redirect from the social network
- such as the user ID and an ACCESS TOKEN which you can then store in your
database in some capacity associating
your 'actual' application user with
the ID of the social network.
when the user returns to the site, you
can then
1 verify cookies set by the social
network services (various schemes
typically verifying a signature, based
on sha1 or md5 hash of your
application data - by which i mean the
data you get when you register your
app with twitter/facebook, typically a
consumer key, application ID, etc. -
with the received cookies) so you know
the user has logged in with the social
network
2 find your database entry association
as described above
3 login your user manually based on
the assumption that facebook/twitter
connection is secure.
caveat: this is only as secure as your
implementation (or as secure as
facebook/twitter's implementations, if
you prefer...)
although twitter's OAuth does not
currently seem to work quite right,
their general description of the
process is pretty informative:
http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth
good luck.
J
I have been contemplating adding FB auth to our app, but we know that our returning users might click it and complete checkout for a new item, and then be surprised to not see any of their existing orders. To solve this, when a user clicks the 'Login with Facebook' item, we are using that click to fire a dropdown menu with two options:
[ Login with Facebook ]
[ Create new account ]
[ I have an account ]
If the user clicks 'I have an account' we send them to FB auth and return email from FB to our app. We compare that email to our existing users. If we match, we add the FB creds to the user. If no match, we throw an alert:
The email you have with FB does not match any of our accounts. To log in to your existing account, login with your email below, or update the email in your Facebook account
This allows the user to create a whole new account, if they want to keep them separate, without needing a new email service. While this is an edge case, it is a feature.