Social/Open Log-In: Magento?

Question

Its easy enough to install/configure something like ShareThis but what about the social "log-in" plug-ins that are increasingly popular?

e.g.

"sign in with"...

Facebook Twitter OpenID

My questions are this:

1. Does the development of each of these three have to be done separately or can it essentially be replicated for each.

2. If a user chooses to "sign in with"...Facebook, Twitter or OpenID is there a compromise on the admin/store owner? what would the store owner loose by letting users do this? When users create accounts this way, are they given a regular user account (site.com/magento/index.php/customer/account/index/)??

Answer 1

Hi,

There are already a number of extensions available to offer third-party authentication methods. Note I am not affliated with any of these, nor have I implemented them, so I can't comment on their quality of code...

• OpenId
• Facebook

With regard to security, I don't believe there is a particular risk, but you are increasing the overall risk somewhat. I personally would expect OpenId to be less risky as it is not one single source (there are multiple OpenId providers) and it doesn't attract negative feeling in the web community like Facebook, making it less likely to be targeted. But from a customer experience POV, I would guess that Facebook's usage would be much higher.