
Amazon Announces Login with Amazon - wanghq
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1824961&highlight=
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hemancuso
I was shocked to discover this is the canonical URL & domain for the Amazon
press releases. After I clicked the link and saw the URL I initially thought
this was some bizarre phishing scheme.

That being said, I think this is a great idea. I don't love the Facebook OAuth
flow and the amount of access most apps ask for. I have trouble taking Twitter
seriously as an OAuth provider [bias much?]. I think there are many US-focused
companies who will be excited to have Google & Amazon as the two default OAuth
authentication providers. If nothing else, it's much more adult than
Twitter/Facebook. Oh, and Amazon has your credit card info and a great
platform for SaaS billing :)

~~~
criley
I agree. I love OAuth idea and the single-sign on flow. I love having one
source where I can go and see all of the sites that have my info, and I love
being able to rescind my account from that central location.

However, I hate that Facebook/Twitter take it a step further with all of their
social integration features to the point where many apps assume, by default,
that you want to share share share everything you do all over your social
network.

As I've found a number of apps/websites _that do not allow you to continue
without giving them permission to post on your wall_ , I've been forced to
mark every single app/OAuth site on my Facebook as available to "only me".
Post all you want, no one will ever see it.

Curating what gets posted under your name shouldn't be this much work. I
shouldn't have to strive for a clean digital presence with content that adds
something to my readers life.

I'd love an OAuth provider that HAS NO SOCIAL NETWORK!

And Google is out on this too, sorry, but Google Plus is _obviously_ the only
web property that Google cares about anymore and trusting them not to
socialify everything is a fools game.

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hayksaakian
I though persona by Mozilla was basically this.

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StavrosK
It is. It's unfortunate that more people don't know about it, especially since
it's ridiculously easy to implement, well-designed and would save us all a lot
of hassle.

If you're running a Django app, please add Persona integration. It takes
around five minutes, literally.

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soapdog
I'd rather use Mozilla Persona based login systems than OAuth based ones. From
both a user and a developer point of view, Persona is a very refreshing
approach to identity instead of OAuth.

For those wanting to know more about Persona, check out
<https://login.persona.org/about>

also since Persona is from Mozilla, you can see all the code and development
and you know that privacy and user safety are number one priority.

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bitskits
I'm having trouble finding sites that use Persona as a login option. Does
anyone have any examples? Trovebox seems to have a demo site up, but I was not
able to actually log in to my account.

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zobzu
Ditto. Why isn't HN supporting persona? :)

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soapdog
I wish HN would use persona!

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6cxs2hd6
This is about the four horsemen -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google -- and how
Amazon is moving forward with Facebook and Google, and perhaps into the lead.

The true purpose of Google+ is to accumulate more information about you, not
to be a "social network" per se. The latter is the means to the former.

Amazon has a huge amount of exceptionally high quality ecommerce information.
They have "only" 200 million users, but info about what they actually like --
because they buy it -- not what they say they like. Plus, for search -- if
you're searching for products/pricing, you might already use Amazon not
Google.

Login helps Amazon extend information beyond ecommerce -- and potentially pull
clearly in the lead in that regard compared to Facebook and Google.

Apple...has a problem in this regard. Excellent company in many respects, but
falling out of the pack in this regard.

p.s. In all of the above I'm only talking about it from the company
perspective. If you think it's not necessarily a good thing for a company to
have even more complete data about you, I wouldn't argue with you.

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chj
Apple doesn't even know how to offer an analytics tool for app developers.

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mmastrac
Alright, but the question is "why would someone want to log in with Amazon"?
There's no social network attached to your Amazon account. It seems like it
would be an odd choice of identity provider, unless you are a store and
already using Amazon's fulfillment services.

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crazygringo
For some reason it strikes me as a pretty good idea. Upon further reflection,
I think it has something to do with:

\- Trust -- people increasingly distrust sites like Facebook or Google
(privacy concerns), but Amazon still has pretty much entirely "positive"
feelings for consumers. And if they can run AWS as well as they can, then you
assume you can trust them with your password too

\- Micropayments -- your credit card is already linked to your Amazon account,
presumably, so it suddenly enables you to pay for content, etc. on a wide
range of sites where you might not otherwise, due to friction and trust issues

It's funny... for some undefinable "fuzzy" reason, I feel much more willing to
log into a site using Amazon credentials, than I would with Google, Facebook
or even Apple.

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ollysb
That's probably because you're a paying customer rather than a pair of
eyeballs to them.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Right. You're the customer, not the product.

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jeffbarr
You can also integrate this with your own apps via AWS / IAM:

[http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/05/aws-iam-now-supports-
amaz...](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/05/aws-iam-now-supports-amazon-
facebook-and-google-identity-federation.html)

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shmerl
I'd prefer Mozilla persona. Amazon as well as Facebook and etc. aren't
trustworthy - they are tracking your activity and using them for external
logins sounds like a very bad idea.

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rubberband
I get Facebook. But why is Amazon not trustworthy?

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shmerl
How are they different from Facebook? They also have behavioral targeted
advertisement.

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EGreg
Amazon is all about e-commerce, and their partners are reporting a 40%
adoption rate for new signups? That sounds way higher than facebook's oauth
... if this continues, Amazon could be an awesome platform to build a business
on! They also have a credit system now -- and inventory!

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brentm
I think this could be really interesting. In my opinion, Login with Facebook
creates a little bit of anxiety for customers. Everyone has been burned by
unanticipated sharing & with this there is no social network to share to. I
need to read the documentation (from a quick glance) it didn't seem like
allowing people to checkout with Amazon on your site was possible but I bet
that isn't far behind. That to me could be great if they are reasonable on
commission rates.

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kmfrk
The more the merrier. I only feel comfortable using my Twitter log-in, and I
don't have any privacy reservations with Amazon either.

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Turing_Machine
Yes. Amazon itself is undoubtedly data mining your purchase history, but at
least they're not spewing your personal info to every random
Serfville/PirateWars "games" that one of your friends signs up for (yes, I
know that you can turn most of that off, and I have; most people don't).

Everything I've heard and experienced indicates that Amazon is pretty tight
with customer information. Certainly you don't get any personal information on
customers when you sell ebooks through the Kindle store. Apple is also pretty
good about that.

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jpalomaki
My main problem with these (as user) is that I usually have hard time
remembering which sign-on system I have used for a particular site. Twitter?
Google? Facebook? Username and pass? Amazon?

In most cases what I would truly like to have is a option to order a sign-on
link to my email that would be valid for single use and just for some minutes.

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jwomers
I think this is really great! As a customer, I'd much rather sign in with this
than Facebook or Twitter, as then I know there would be no social side-effects
- e.g. posting on my behalf or similar - which is sometimes anxious making
when confronted with a social login button. This separates easy sign-in from
social sharing.

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jaredcwhite
I'll echo what some of the other commenters are saying, namely that for
anything e-commerce related (and I'd argue SaaS-type software) this method of
login makes most sense. If you were going to sign up for a free trial of
something or create an account at a store, would you want to login with
Facebook or Twitter? Or Amazon, whom you likely already trust with your money.
The latter I'd say.

On the other hand, if I have a social or news/content site, FB and Twitter
login makes the most sense. That way I have access to their social graph as
well as an indentity.

Anyway, this is pretty cool. I think I'll integrate Login with Amazon with my
startup (mariposta.com) pretty soon, as it very well could lessen signup
friction. We'll see.

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rjohnk
I DON'T WANT MORE LOGINS.

Pretty soon I'll go to "thenewestwebflatdesignstartup.com" and I'll be given
these choices:

Login with Facebook, Login with Twitter, Login with Amazon, Login with
Persona, Login with OpenID

or create an account with email

Click here if you have no idea what account you used.

/rant

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dripton
I'd rather use Amazon than Google or Facebook, but I'd rather use a site that
_only_ did identity than any of the rest. (I don't want access to my Kindle
books screwed up because Amazon decided I did something wrong when using them
for login, and banned my account. Yes, that reminds me that I need to backup
all my Kindle books monthly.)

I don't know what the business model for such a site would be, though.

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cmsmith
This is excellent, as I would love to have a shared login provider whose
business model does not revolve around sharing my information (e.g. twitter,
facebook, google). I really don't want everyone on my [friends list
equivalent] to know every time I create an account anywhere on the internet,
and I feel like I'm always one privacy setting away from that happening.

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kriro
Seems like a great idea and a signup option that will spread quickly. Mostly
because Amazon accounts tend to be linked to payment options already so you
essentially add people who are used to and willing to play online to your
site.

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xsace
I hate Amazon login where I can't reuse any old passwords as a new one or even
as part of the new one.

It makes it just impossible to remember your login when you reset it a few
times, because you need to learn a new one.

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r4vik
why are you remembering passwords?

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crucio
Can this be used for taking payments quickly from users?

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foobar456
OAuth is for authorization, not authentication. Please stop using it like
this. If you want SSO-style authentication using OpenID or SAML2.

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qu4z-2
Unfortunately I think that ship has sailed. Personally I'm hoping Persona will
catch on. At least that's designed as an authentication scheme.

~~~
foobar456
What problem does it solve that OpenID doesn't? OpenID already has a lot of
adoption, and IMO works quite well.

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qu4z-2
OpenID is great, but I somehow just don't expect it to get that much adoption
on sites where "Sign In With Facebook" is the default. Whereas I have at least
some hope that Persona might become that common if Mozilla play their cards
right.

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jjuliano
It seems that Login systems is becoming a fragmented space, there's Persona,
Google, Oauth, Wordpress, etc. and now Amazon.

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chatmasta
So when are Amazon payments coming?

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drivers99
I just used Amazon payments today to buy the new Humble Bundle.

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gcr
...This feels more like OpenID rather than OAuth. Could someone explain? I'm
so confused.

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qu4z-2
People apparently think that OAuth is Open Authentication not Open
Authorization. I think that ship has sailed, unfortunately. Although it still
confuses me when I go to log in to a site and I get the pop-up about "Do you
want to authorize this application to access <X>?"

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olympus
I understand that this is a good idea for Amazon because it is good for them
to keep people within their ecosystem, but this is what I think of whenever
someone announces a product that has already been made several times:
<http://xkcd.com/927/>

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rdl
I wish I could OAuth with my hn login!

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youngerdryas
This could be a game changer for web payments and the built-in A/B testing
sounds cool but I couldn't find any details in the docs.

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bertyoo
Won't be using this.

