Difference between HTTPContextBase.User and MembershipUser

Question

Please clarify.

Answer 1

The Context.User is the IPrincipal of the user under which the current process on the machine is running. The MembershipUser is an application-level user that you have authenticated somehow. Those two things can be the same (impersonation) or they can be different (running under a service account and authenticating users from a database for example). By default, they are different.