Social logins on a forum?

[shamzblueworld]

Is it good to add the social login option on a forum? As almost everyone use social networks these days and some people do find registering a long process, so for timesaving and of course of its ease, they login with social sites like facebook and twitter, I know I do sometimes.
But is it secure? Any expert input will be appriciated.
Thank you

 

[AndroidOS]

Personally I don't integrate it with any of my forums, but that's mainly because I don;t agree with what most of the big social media sites are doing nowadays. Another way to look at it is: If my Facebook account is hacked, then someone has access to all of my forum account as well. So, not only do I not think it is secure, but I also don;t agree with Facebook, Twitter etc. in general, so would never add it to my forum as a credential system.

 

[Martee]

I like to have it there just incase, because I like to accommodate others. I personally use it on some sites because I am far too lazy to open my hotmail to click those boring verificication links, haha. As you said @shamzblueworld , it is a bit of a timesaver and easy for some, me anyway.

Obviously security does come into it, if you're hacked on your social media accounts, they do potentially have access to you forum accounts. But I use a secure password and take mad security when downloading stuff online so it doesnt bother me as much as it would for others maybe.

 

[shamzblueworld]

Well to be honest if I add this to my forum, I wont logging in to my own forum with social login, will not verify my social account with a founder account, that surely is a huge risk, and I dont think anyone should ever take this, but it is good to have it for users, because it is just eases the registeration pain a bit.

 

[MyDigitalpoint]

Personally I found hard the implementation, particularly adding Facebook and Twitter login ability because it requires an API secret and API consumer keys, which involves time and effort and eventually they change their oAuth or API access and here you go needing to make changes.

Integrating Google accounts and OpenID is easier though.

However many times software includes plugins to facilitate the process and some other whether using a support plugin or coding yourself, the main problem I have found with this option is that people skip all your local requirements and this is not what I want.

I mean, a regular user needs to add username, fill out a profile, upload an avatar. Using a social login pulls in their basic information, but many times these details don't remain in your local database but are temporary while the user is logged, but lost when he or she logs out or the session expire.

I don't need that a social media has control over my users but not me.

 

[Collin]

I can see where Android OS is coming from, but I understand now that you basically are pulling information like most sites do. I don't know if any of you have heard of OpenID. I personally would never use it. If someone DID hack my Twitter or Facebook account, they would have access to all of the sites using OpenID. That's why I never signed up with them in the first place.
But I can see the measures of security when it comes to social media integration. I'm not seeing too many sites using OpenID like I used to, which tells me it's fading in a way. I personally agree with integrating Facebook to pull basic information when signing up for a site, and I wouldn't mind doing it.
However, I have disabled it on my forums because users didn't want to show that in their timeline. I explained to them that you can make posts disabled or private posted by the application, but others thought it wasn't so secure, and not many we're using it, so I disabled it altogether.
Personally, when it comes to security, I am not all the best at it. All of my passwords are almost the exact same as one another, and if a site requires more I just throw it on the end. I store my passwords online, which isn't so smart. My bank account passwords are all the same, etc., etc. It's just difficult for me to remember a whole bunch of different passwords if I used them. I don't like writing them down or saving them in a spreadsheet either.
I may use integration again in the future, but for now I have it disabled.

 

[CyberGenius]

Well, I think it is good as it eases registration process for some users. Thereby, leading to more members for you.

I use social login(specifically for twitter) on my own site, and it works alright plus people use it for registration at times. However, personally, I can't use a social login to register on any site because of security reasons and I don't want all my info on just any site.