Gmail Adds OAuth Support for Safer 3rd Party Sign-ins

sparksspace | Monday, April 05, 2010 | 0 comments

Google has  recently  announced  new feature in Gmail, which enables third-party apps to access your email securely using the OAuth authorization protocol.OAuth is the emerging protocol  for authorizing data access for third parties, users won't have to disclose their passwords.

Usually when a user authorises a third party developer to see their contacts list, he has to give-out password which is a very insecure way of doing things especially when the 3rd part app is not as trustworthy.OAuth which enables the user to give their consent for specific access without sharing their password. Most Google APIs support this OAuth standard, and  it is also available for the IMAP/SMTP feature of Gmail.Gmail Drive is a popular application that uses your Gmail account to store files.Every time it asks your username and password to send data to your Gmail account.When applications like Gmail Drive switch to OAuth authentication, you'll no longer have to enter your credentials. Instead, the application will open a Google web page and you'll only have to authorize the request.Twitter added OAuth support back in April of last year, and currently there are too many third-party apps.

One of the first companies using this feature is Syphir, in their SmartPush application for the iPhone, as shown in the screenshots below. Unlike other push apps, Sypher's SmartPush application never sees or stores the user’s Gmail password thanks to this new OAuth support.

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With  OAuth your GMail account could now be backed up by third party sites without ever saving your username and password ,for example online cloud backup  services like  Backupify .Google added that it was working with Yahoo! and Mozilla on a formal Internet standard for using OAuth with IMAP/SMTP.

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