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I've seen sign in methods using GitHub as an authentication provider, for example c9.io: (AWS Cloud9)

Is it possible to authenticate into Stack Exchange using this method? At the moment there's other methods such as OpenID, Google, Yahoo and Facebook, but it would be interesting to also have the GitHub authentication.

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You can log into any Stack Exchange site using the credentials from any Open ID provider. Unfortunately, at this time, GitHub is not an Open ID provider, so you can't log in using those credentials.

Also, it's highly unlikely that SE would create a special login mechanism for GitHub accounts unless there was great incentive to do so; it would require resources (time, money) to fabricate a custom mechanism when one already exists for this specific purpose (Open ID).

If anything, I suggest that you urge GitHub to become an Open ID provider, rallying support around that initiative. Once they are an Open ID provider, you'll be able to login to any Stack Exchange site with those credentials and link them to your account.

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  • 2
    or, OAuth 2.0 which is nearly as convenient.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Apr 20, 2012 at 3:40
  • 1
    developer.github.com/v3/oauth
    – Tracker1
    Commented Apr 10, 2013 at 0:48
  • @Tracker1 It's still not OpenID, unfortunately.
    – casperOne Mod
    Commented Apr 10, 2013 at 11:19
  • @casperOne Neither Facebook is openID provider…
    – skalee
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 14:33
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    @skalee Very true, but that's a choice that the SE folk decided to make, presumably in order to reduce friction in logging into not just SO, but all of the Stack Exchange sites, many of which have nothing to do with coding. In providing Facebook as a login provider, they reduce the friction for almost a billion people to access Stack Exchange sites. That said, I'd still push this for Stack Overflow, as it makes perfect sense. Also, the [OAuth token exchange] is simple enough to implement. All that they have to do is ask for the user:email scope so that they can try to sync accounts.
    – casperOne Mod
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 12:24
  • I don't see how this answer gets so many upvotes and why this thread is marked as answered and feels like status-declined. Discourse, the little sister of Stack Exchange for example, offers Github authentication by default, and that's just a forum. I don't see why a network with mainly technical and scientific Q&A sites should not offer Github authentication, as so many developers hang around on Github all day long and by any chance pop over to Stackoverflow to get help.
    – q9f
    Commented Sep 22, 2016 at 8:44
  • There are sites that uses GitHub authentication like Code Review and CodePen. So whay would it require resources to make this?
    – H. Pauwelyn
    Commented Apr 30, 2017 at 8:40
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    Now that StackOverflow want to remove support for OpenID, this answer will unfortunately no longer be relevant... :(
    – Sorin Postelnicu
    Commented Jul 7, 2018 at 10:56
  • This new service use github connect: stackshare.io
    – Martin Delille
    Commented Sep 14, 2018 at 12:22
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The PR was finally approved and merged: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/11/11/announcing-support-for-github-authentication-in-stack-overflow/

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The solution is to set up a personal page, which utilizes "openid.delegate" to forward to the "openid.server". This is done in the HEAD section of that page by using "meta" and "link" tags.

For inspiration: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1223529

For testing use this: http://test-id.org/OP/Sreg.aspx

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    Followup note: this will not work after July 25th, 2018, thanks to SO retiring their support for OpenID. (Sadface; I was one of the 13K active OpenID users.)
    – Eric A. Meyer
    Commented Jul 16, 2018 at 15:53
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This is definitely possible...

I login to SO.com, etc. using my openid of mralexgray.github.com, which is my gh-pages URL. I forget how I set this up... at some point in the distant past... but I will research it and update this answer.

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It's worth noting that they do support OAuth3 it looks like...

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