Look ma, no password! threadsy adds Gmail OAuth support
April 14, 2010 at 5:56 pm scott 3 comments
Two weeks ago, Gmail announced support for a secure authentication method called OAuth (see the announcement here). The key benefit of OAuth is that it lets you access your Gmail on sites like threadsy without ever sharing your password. Today we’ve added full support for this new protocol; we’re one of the first to do so!
Now with threadsy you can add your existing Gmail or Google Apps email accounts without ever providing your passwords to threadsy. Existing threadsy users can upgrade to the new standard, and once you do we’ll no longer store your email password. Please see below for a guide to upgrading any Gmail or Google Apps accounts you’ve previously added to threadsy.
Keeping your information private & secure is something threadsy takes very seriously, and supporting Gmail OAuth is just the latest of many steps we’ve taken. We also use Facebook Connect (Facebook’s recommended authentication method) and Twitter OAuth (Twitter’s secure authentication method).
For other non-Google email accounts that you use with threadsy (Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and IMAP), we use industry-standard encryption to secure your passwords. We’re closely watching the latest developments such as Yahoo Mail’s recent announcement of OAuth support and welcome the trend of more secure access. It’s also worth reiterating that threadsy will never share your email address, contacts, or personal information with third parties. See our privacy policy for more details on how threadsy protects your privacy.
Walkthrough: upgrading Gmail & Google Apps accounts in threadsy
If you’ve already added any Gmail & Google Apps accounts to threadsy, when you login you’ll see this popup:
Click the green upgrade button and you’ll see one of 2 screens:
Screen 1: If you see this screen, select an account from the list or select ‘Choose another account’:
Screen 2: Gmail login screen on google.com, enter your email address and password. Your password is not shared outside of Google.
Then on the next screen, click ‘Grant access’ to upgrade:
If you have any difficulties in the upgrade process, please let us know at support@threadsy.com and we’ll work through it with you.
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1.
Sean Patterson | April 20, 2010 at 10:12 am
Worked like a charm. Keep up the great work guys!
2.
threadsy opens to the public! « threadsy blog | May 4, 2010 at 8:52 am
[...] support for Gmail’s secure authentication method OAuth (removes need to give threadsy Gmail pa… [...]
3.
binther | October 20, 2011 at 2:43 am
Sorry to see you go. You provided a valuable service by enabling both mail and social applications into one location. Wish you well in your future endeavours!