OAuth
Definition.
OAuth: An open standard for access delegation, commonly used as a way for Internet users to grant websites or applications access to their information.
In More Detail
OAuth is about delegated authorisation: letting an application act on a user's behalf without ever handling their password. 'Sign in with Google' is the familiar case.
Two things are commonly conflated. OAuth authorises access to a resource; OpenID Connect sits on top and handles identity. If what you actually want is 'who is this user', you want OIDC. And the redirect URI must be registered exactly — an open redirect there is a standard way these flows get abused.
In Practice
This is what powers "Sign in with Google" style buttons — I implement it through Django's django-allauth or a similar library rather than rolling custom OAuth handling, since the security details are easy to get subtly wrong from scratch.
Related Terms
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