When the app successfully logins in via Facebook it begins to save the credentials. This should ask the user if they want to save it with SmartLock or not, but it's being saved automatically.
Inside the save callback I get a success with no resolution. It should not be a success, and it should contain a resolution to allow prompting the user to save.
Is there any reason why this is, or any way to get the functionality I want?
-Thank you
Password-less "credentials" can be saved without needing to prompt the user (i.e., credential built with .setAccountType in place of .setPassword) if the identifier on the credential matches a Google Account on the device.
And in general, when the user returns on another device, user can be immediately signed back in if they are using an account for the app that matches one on the device, since such credentials will come with a token you can use for auth. For example, gmail user whose account is active on a device (and could otherwise receive email, such as for a password reset flow), can be signed in to apps without need extra UI or to trigger a Facebook flow unnecessarily to get a different token.
In the past, the API required prompts to save any information, but we found in user research testing that minimizing the dialogs users encounter reduces confusion, streamlines the user experience, and promotes security best practices (such as using tokens from authoritative issuers when relying on email-based identifiers).
Related
When using OAuth we are using a third party to take care of the authentication of a user.
E.g. when using Facebook we “register” our app with Facebook and when a user of our app tries to login instead of providing to the app his credentials he logs in using his Facebook account.
What I don’t understand is why does the app trust the user? All the app knows is that the user is trusted from Facebook as he has an account there. How can we trust that the user should really access the app?
In this case the "user" you are providing services to is the Facebook/Google/Instagram/etc. account. From your perspective, you do not care who the person typing the credentials in is.
Normally, all you know is that the person who logs into your app knows the user name and the password for the account. In the external validation case, you know what the person has this specific login for fb/google/inst and knows the password associated with it.
Please keep in mind than in most cases (local or external validation), you do not know the person associated with the account (unless you have some method of personal validation, like credit card or sending a traditional letter with some auth). All you know is that the person who logged in knows the credentials.
Technically, each of those accounts (fb, google, inst) is a separate "user", and your local credentials login is a different one yet.
The whole concept is about user convenience really, plus some additional benefits like having the user data stored and maintained by someone else, additional security and so on.
That said, it is still totally fine if you stick to the "local" credentials method, just make sure it is secure :-)
EDIT:
A simple example:
Your app has two login options - a simple login with password and login with Google.
You also have a user, John Smith.
John opens your app, which requires login and has some sensitive data connected with each account.
Scenario 1. John selects standard, "local" login option and logs in using his credentials JohnSmith1111 and password 12345. John is now able to display the data associated with the account JohnSmith1111.
Scenario 2. John selects log in with Google. He is redirected to the login page, authenticates there and returns to your app. Your app is notified that the user google_john_smith has successfully authenticated. John is now able to display the data associated with the account google_john_smith.
The point is that the account validated using those login options is not the same! There is no "trust" issue here.
how I can keep my application logged Xamarin.Android with facebook, google, Active Directory etc. Do not ask me to start each time the application runs
Use Xamarin Auth plugin.You can keep user data in AcccounStore which persists between app runs. How often user gets logged out depends on the provider (Facebook, Google, etc) If provider supports not expiring access_token just use it all the time. If provider doesn't support that then use refresh_token
I'm logging my users into our app using Google+. The actual G+ signing in happens on the server though. I get back some user data such as email and name. I'm using this to store the users credentials as a google account.
The issue arises when I try to save it. In the callback to save the creds in "Auth.CredentialsApi.save" it returns no resolution and nothing ends up happening. If I remove the Google IdentityProvider from the creds then it saves without a password.
Does anyone know why a resolution is not found when the IndentityProvider is set?
In Play Services 8+, no resolution (confirmation UI) is required to save a Google Sign-In to the user's Google Account using the Smart Lock API (i.e., the credential's type is set to IdentityProviders.GOOGLE and the email address matches one signed in on the device, and the user has not disabled saving in settings). Note that you cannot set both an account type and password on a credential object when saving with the API -- if a user has a password simply store that for authentication purposes.
An API call with a credential of this type should save automatically and be available immediately, so just check that this credential is available when making a Auth.CredentialsApi.request() using a CredentialRequest built with .setAccountTypes(IdentityProviders.GOOGLE) and that the saved credential is shown on passwords.google.com and has "with Google" in place of a password.
When retrieving this credential, you can use it to know that you've got a user with an existing account and they signed in with Google previously. You then can customize the auth UI for this returning user, or simply trigger a Google Sign-In flow for the user automatically and give them a returning user experience when the app starts using the Auth.GoogleSignInApi.silentSignIn() method in the latest version of the Google Sign-In library. Here's a full code example.
I'm trying to integrate an existing login system for a mobile application with some social media sign-in solutions. I successfully managed to integrate both facebook and google+ sign in with my app and I get to the point where the users are signed in and I can get their social information.
But now I was left wondering which would be the best approach in order to integrate users that decided to use a social media account with my native login system. Should I use their email accounts as login and maybe generate a password on the server side? Or maybe use an oauth token instead of a password?
I need to keep track of my users, even the ones that did not formally filled a registration form. So what should I place instead of email + password?
This can be tricky - the majority case is easy, but you need to think about the edges. I find it easer to consider email/password as just another authentication mechanism. You want
A user record with the core data about that user (perhaps name, email address, app specific profile data etc.)
A series of records for their connected auth methods, e.g. Google+, Facebook, user/pass.
The connected auth methods can store the relevant information for those methods - e.g. for Google it would likely be Google user Id and perhaps refresh token if using offline access. This makes it easy for you to offer connecting multiple social accounts.
Password may be a special case that you want to store against the original user record. In that case, if someone signs-up using a social login, then you can either generate a random password, or leave it null. Either way, as long as you request the email address for the user, you can always let them go through a Forgot Password flow (where you generate and email them a password) if they want to access their account but no longer have their 3p login.
What you don't want to do if avoidable is to force the users to give you a new password just after they sign in. However, it you are allowing multiple login methods to be associated with one account, you might want to allow associating them. So, your flow might be:
User signs in (with 3p or email/pass)
If you have a record for that login method (e.g. matching Google or Facebook user id, matching email/pass combination), sign the user in, and you are done.
If you have no matching record for that sign in method:
See if you have a matching email address with an existing user account. If you do, some sites automatically merge the new login method to this account. If privacy/security is more of a concern you might want to confirm the user wants to login to that account, or make them go through a 1-time validation (e.g. "it looks like you've signed in with a password before, please enter your password now to link your account and your Google account" etc.). Then link the accounts and continue as if signed in.
See if you have an account which may be that person. E.g, perhaps you have an account with a matching name. In that case, you might want to hint the user to connect their accounts (e.g. a prompt somewhere that says "have you connected before with Facebook? Click here to link these accounts" which then takes the user through a sign in process for the login method you suspect they might have).
If they look totally new, create a new user record, and treat them as newly signed up.
Its significantly easier if you can treat email address as a unique field. That means if someone signs in with a 3p account associated with an email address you already have a user for you might have to force them to link their account before continuing. If they didn't want to and you required an email address, you could prompt them to enter one manually and then validate it as normal by sending them an email and having them confirm it.
ChrLipp's links are good, also take a look at the guide for using FB and G+ together on the Google Developers site: https://developers.google.com/+/best-practices/facebook
How did you implement the social media sign-in's? For example Facebook: did you use Login for Android? In this case the docs say under Checking login status:
Apps using our SDKs can check whether someone has already logged in using built-in functions. All other apps must create their own way of storing when a person has logged in, and when that indicator is not there, proceed on the assumption that they are logged out.
And if you follow the link to Storing access tokens and login status you can read:
The token should be stored so it's available to all parts of the app when it makes API calls. ... If you're building a ... mobile app, then you should use the datastore available to your app. Also, the app should store the token in a database along with the user_id to identify it.
Have an enumeration (NativeLogin, Facebook, GooglePlus) and depending on this enumeration the following information:
NativeLogin
UserName, Password
Facebook and GooglePlus
Facebook or GooglePlus ID and their User Access Token
In all cases you should store the email adress you get in an additional field.
I'm a bit confused about how facebook.logout(context) works.
Because even after calling log out, I am able to get access to information that requires an auth_token. So how is that even possible? I came across this topic, which let me a bit confused: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6597688/487940
After reading that answer, this is my question: So if the user grants access to [my] application, he will always be authenticated if he is logged into the [official] facebook application? Even if I try to call facebook.logout(context) in [my] application, he will be logged in and my application will be able to make calls to Facebook API?'
Sorry, about I'm not able to understand this behavior.
UPDATE: After reading Torid's reponse, I am confused about facebook.logout() function. What is the purpose of this function if it does not log the user out? Because, I don't see the purpose of calling this purpose anymore. It doesn't log the user out.
There are two independent things going on here: 1) whether your user has authenticated your app (with permissions) to Facebook and 2) whether your user is logged in to Facebook.
Authentication is required the first time your user uses your app and lasts until the user explicitly de-authenticates (e.g. through the Facebook web Account Settings -> Apps -> App Settings).
Log in may be required each time your user starts your app. But if you use the default SDK authorize(), that tries to do a Single Sign On (SSO), where if the Facebook app is logged in, your app is automatically logged in and uses the existing access token.
If you are using SSO, when you do a logout, that has no effect, as a real logout would have to log out the Facebook app - which the user might not like!
You can get around this behavior by doing an authorize of the form
authorize(this, PERMISSIONS, FORCE_DIALOG_AUTH, new LoginDialogListener());
which avoids SSO and forces a dialog login. Of course, that then forces your user to login each time you start your app - unless you save the login details / access token under the
covers (which is what the SDK does - check the source).