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> Having two almost identical terms that mean completely different things is not a very good idea.

What's the problem of telling apart the task of authenticating users from authorizing their access?

There's already identification and authorization (IAM) which is mostly a backronym.

Identification & Authorisation are a better pairing here than Authentication and Authorisation.

This way, if someone says "Oh yeah we have an auth module on this site" you don't need to immediately disambiguate the statement.

But then "auth" itself is ambiguous. So it might make sense to get rid of the lot. "Identification" is a good word for the first. Perhaps "Permissions" for the second?

authn -> ident

authz -> perm

So much clearer.

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