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Comment by sarciszewski | Hacker News Reader

> I don't understand why they would trust <crappy forum owner> over a dedicated authentication storage place but that's their choice.

What if <crappy forum owner> happens to be a security engineer, and <crappy forum> happens to be Silk Road 13?

The trust decisions people make are situational and nuanced. OAuth is great if that's where people invest their trust. Otherwise, you're outsourcing it for the user to a company they might fear.

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Again. The user picks who they authenticate with. You (the site owner) get no say in the matter. You aren't outsourcing it to any one company.

No, you're saying "which of this limited set of companies are you going to authenticate with" instead. If you don't want to be guilty of taking users' agency away from their own trust decisions, you need to do one of two things:

1. Let every website on the Internet potentially be an OAuth provider.

2. Make OAuth optional.

If you follow option #2, then this article is still relevant because you need to handle passwords securely.

Your first paragraph is like saying using email is forcing somebody to use one of a "limited set of companies". It's nonsense. Again, if they don't like what's on offer they can host their own, just like email!. They can hire a company like yours to host their credentials with as many layers of security as they want. The user has ultimate choice.

Secondly, every website on the Internet is potentially an OAuth provider.

Not to mention that I have —on multiple occasions here— suggested that websites that consume OAuth should also provide it (like Stack Exchange).

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