Using OAuth to authenticate users

OAuth is an open standard used to authenticate users to many different websites. A resource owner effectively delegates access to a server resource without having to share their credentials. It works over HTTPS. OAuth 2.0 succeeded OAuth and is not backwards compatible. It provides client developers a simple way of providing authentication. Several companies use OAuth 2.0 including PayPal, Comcast, and Blizzard Entertainment.

A list of OAuth 2.0 providers is found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OAuth_providers. We will use several of these in our discussions.