Facebook and OpenID logins - are they appropriate for web apps dependent on user-generated content?

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I'm a person with a non-programming background working on a web application that must store user-generated content and always associate that content with the user who created it. I just had the developer tell me since the application must do this, using Facebook as an alternate login method is pointless because Facebook only let's a third-party web application hang on to Facebook profile information for a certain amount of time, and therefore users who login via Facebook cannot actually contribute content that would remain in the web application's databases.

I'm having trouble swallowing this. I just signed up and logged in to stackoverflow using my Facebook account, and it appears to have generated a site-specific user ID that was automatically associated with my Facebook account - thereby allowing me to save/store content on the site without having to actually create a site-specific profile.

My questions:

Where is the misunderstanding here? To what extent do alternative login options affect the ability of my application, which will consist largely of user-generated content, to store user-generated data and consistently associate it with that user? Appreciate the help!

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Alternative login allows users to use an existing account to sign in to multiple websites, without needing to create new passwords. Alternate login using facebook, OpenID, gmail or any other provider doesn't affect the ability of your application to store user generated content.

When a user logs in using a login option for e.g. facebook, user enters the facebook login credential(if he isn't already logged in), facebook generates a authenticated token which is utilised by your application for future use.

In case of alternative logins only the login information (User ID/Password) isn't stored in your application, it totally depends on how you are implementing it in your application. But in any case it doesn't affect your application in saving storing and using the user generated content in your website.

Please refer to this link for more info -

  1. http://openid.net/get-an-openid/what-is-openid/
  2. http://oauth.net/

Hope this helps!