Demystifying The Facebook Login
Apps using 3rd party services as a means to authenticate users is becoming ever ubiquitous. Being a founder with a very small team (we don’t plan on staying this way for long though), I have personal experience with examining the tradeoffs between starting from scratch with an in-house login system or leveraging some other company’s existing infrastructure.
There are many reasons app developers decide not to build their own login systems in the beginning and many keep it that way even way past the time when they are small (e.g. Tinder). At the end of the day, what seemed to work best for my team was using Facebook login. It not only allowed for us to get to market quicker, but it also gave us the ability to get data from current Facebook users so we could keep improving the content we give to our users. The saved time allowed us to do more of what really matters at the beginning stages of the company — building an amazing product with features that users want.
One thing that I suspected might be an issue before we committed to using Facebook came to light very quickly though. People are protective of their social media accounts. They do not trust logging in with their precious Facebook credentials if the company is not reputable. For a startup, this can be devastating. The way some companies get around this is offering multiple 3rd party logins (Google Plus/Twitter, for example). That was not an option for us for strategic reasons.
If you are not an app developer, let me try to demystify the Facebook login for you. While being protective of social media accounts is important, it appears users do not fundamentally understand what logging in with 3rd party services means. I think it is important for consumers of any and all internet products to realize that these big companies (the Facebooks and Googles of the world) care about their users (whether that stems from genuine concern or consumer protection laws can be debated). They do everything in their power to make sure app developers have only the things that they need for their apps to function. When it comes to Facebook, after you enter your credentials, Facebook does not give your password to the app that you are trying to use. They just give a thumbs up or a thumbs down, in regards to if you entered the correct info. If you entered your info correctly, the next step is checking what you have allowed the app you are logging into, to access.
As a user, you have complete control over what permissions/data to allow access to and what not to allow access to. The best part from a consumer’s standpoint is that Facebook does a really good job of policing what information they even allow apps to request from you. My team is still struggling to get Facebook to approve the data that we think we need to give our users the best experience possible — we’ve only gotten a subset of the limited permissions we need! What this means is that you, the consumer, are being taken care of. Yes, you should be careful of phishing scams but if apps are using Facebook login in the way that Facebook allows it to be used, your login credentials are safe.
To the developers out there, keep all of the above in mind when you are working with Facebook login. If you run into the same issues as me, try to think of ways to educate users or to get them more involved with your app before asking them to login, so they know they are actually signing up for something they may enjoy! To the consumers out there, if an app ever asks for your login and the user experience does not feel like it is actually Facebook (or whatever service you are logging in with), that is a warning sign and you should be weary of logging in. In most cases though, you are probably good to tap on that dark blue login button to start improving the way you live (that is, after all, what apps are for)!
So go ahead and login, after downloading the Rekd app, without worry!
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