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0 pointsjrockway5y ago0 comments

Is this even a provider issue? If an application asks for scopes=[profile] then the OAuth provider has two choices -- categorically deny it, or ask you to authorize it. They all ask you to authorize it, and you can say no, and then the app doesn't work because the developers decided that you can't use their app unless you give them your profile information.

The app could easily ask you to check a checkbox next to each scope, and then write separate code for each combination of checkboxes. They decided not to do that because it's probably not worth your business if you don't want to give them full access. (Honestly, I click a lot of things on HN that ask for way too many scopes, and then I close the window and forget what it was. But the calculation was done -- they don't need me as a user or customer. I can live with that.)

I guess what people want is an IDP that will give applications fake data when you deny a scope. But no application developer wants to deal with that complexity, so they'd never integrate a provider that does that. (They probably moved away from email+password because of all the fake emails that people provide.)

On the other hand, it's mandatory for iOS apps to use Apple's sign-in which auto-generates a fake email address for you. So I suppose some progress is being made. (I have an iPhone but I've never seen this supposedly mandatory OAuth provider. I only know about it from reading HN. So maybe it doesn't actually exist? I have no idea really.)

0 comments

btown5y ago

Auto-generating a single-use profile, or letting you choose a pseudonym, is absolutely a compromise that more identity providers should implement.

namanaggarwal5y ago

Yes it is really provider issue. Apple implemented it and so can any other provider.

I also don't think people want an IDP that provides fake data when you deny a scope. That's a bad implementation IMHO. When you say no that means you don't authorize access for that scope, not that send fake data. Applications should deal with it.

jrockwayOP5y ago

You are fighting conflicting constraints, though, and that's the underlying problem. Application developers won't use an IDP that protects user data. They want that data, that's why they wrote their app! Because nobody would use such an IDP (at least not without being forced to in order to be on a large platform), nobody will write such an IDP.

I'm actually working on an open-source IDP in my spare time, and to me this sounds like something to seriously consider doing right. I appreciate the idea and the discussion. I doubt anyone in the real world will care, though. (Sometimes you need to get the early adopters that do care about these things, though :)

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