Selecting an Authentication System

Google Authentication

Instant Access to Users

The team wanted to ensure that using and accessing Wedium is a seamless process that does not require greater effort. We believed that the easiest way to users to interact with Wedium would be to use a pre-existing Google Account to sign-on. Google is known for their security and protection of user data. Using Google Authentication not only improves ease of access it also increases the trust of the users and makes managing credentials and personal information easier for the developers as outlined below. Furthermore Google Authentication was chosen due to its current popularity.

Trust In Users

Typically, when users come to a new site, and are asked to make a new account with their personal details, they do not feel safe. This is partially because they do not always trust the website to keep their data safe. Thus, by using Google Authentication we ensure that the user data is save as the development team does not have access to their password and major portions of their personal information. The Google API key used allows Wedium to only retrieve the users first name, last name, and profile image. Furthermore, Wedium is only able to retrieve the personal information the users agree to provide. Upon login, they are prompted with the information Wedium requires, which the user may choose to approve or decline.

Easier for Developers

Additionally, storing passwords and ensuring encrypted connections for authentication is a non-trivial problem to solve. Therefore, by using Google Authentication we ensured that we did not keep the users’ credentials but have access to basic user information and are able to issue JWT tokens to identify the users transactions on Wedium.