Password-free authentication for social networks
Erol Ozan · 2017
The last decade has witnessed the rapid increase in the adoption and the popularity of social networks. As the number of social networks increase, simpler and easier sign-up and login processes become a key element to promote the new social networks. In many cases, the simple requirement of creating a new user account hinders users from creating new accounts and prompts them to decline using a new network or service. There are a number of applications that allow users to use their existing social network credentials to sign up, however, some users are reluctant to take advantage of such approaches because of privacy concerns or negative perceptions including the worry of spamming. As a result of those concerns and limitations, alternative user authentication approaches that do not require traditional user registration or log-in steps are being explored by the industry. This paper discusses various approaches that can be applied to create password-free user authentication systems that enable social networks to authenticate individual users and provide them access to user-specific data. The paper discusses the prominent techniques that enables web sites to identify individual users based on the characteristics of their device and browser. The practice of sensing and identifying such attributes is referred to as web-based device fingerprinting. The paper discusses how a number of browser detection methods can be combined to create a system that facilitates password-free user authentication.