Posted by Ryan Troll, Technical Lead, Identity and Authentication
As mentioned in our earlier post reminding users to migrate to newer Google Data APIs, we would like to once again share that the ClientLogin shutdown date is fast approaching, and applications which rely on it will stop working when it shuts down. We encourage you to minimize user disruption by switching to OAuth 2.0.
Our top priority is to safeguard users’ data, and at Google we use risk based analysis to block the vast majority of account hijacking attempts. Our risk analysis systems take into account many signals in addition to passwords to ensure that user data is protected. Password-only authentication has several well known shortcomings and we are actively working to move away from it. Moving to OAuth 2.0 ensures that advances we make in secure authentication are passed on to users signing in to Google services from your applications.
In our efforts to eliminate password-only authentication, we took the first step by announcing a deprecation date of April 20, 2015 for ClientLogin three years ago. At the same time, we recommended OAuth 2.0 as the standard authentication mechanism for our APIs. Applications using OAuth 2.0 never ask users for passwords, and users have tighter control over which data client applications can access. You can use OAuth 2.0 to build clients and websites that securely access account data and work with our advanced security features like 2-step verification.
We’ve taken steps to provide alternatives to password authentication in other protocols as well. CalDAV API V2 only supports OAuth 2.0, and we’ve added OAuth 2.0 support to IMAP, SMTP, and XMPP. While a deprecation timeline for password authentication in these protocols hasn’t been announced yet, developers are strongly encouraged to move to OAuth 2.0.
