Facebook Tip Alert: Linked Accounts

If you are like me, you often find yourself at a computer opening up your first internet browser and checking your email.  This is great.  You log in and see a few hits from your facebook page, blog comments and twitter follower DMs.  The next step?  You open a new tab/window in the browser and log into facebook.  And then log into Twitter.  And then log into Hootsuite.  And then log in….  See the problem?

You can see how this is a pain.  Not only do you have to keep all of your logins memorized it also plays havoc when you have more than one account to maintain.  We have all seen the “Connect with Facebook” buttons and we have all used them a time or two and they are pefect!

Login with Facebook and Twitter Buttons

Today’s tip allows us to save time by doing just the opposite of what these buttons accomplish. Now we can sign into Facebook with our “other” accounts.

Facebook now allows users to use a propietary account like Google Gmail, Yahoo ID, OpenID and even a Verisign PIP to automatically log in to your facebook account skipping the tedious login area.  It simply utilizes for Linked Acounts’s authentication to authorize your login on facebook.  While most of these are common, my Gmail is the first site I visit everyday and will now continue to be so I used it as my example.

As you can see here, I have now linked my Gmail account to my facebook account.

Set your account for facebook to authenticate your without logging in.

Here is how to access this option:

1. Navigate to the Account Setting by finding the “Account” link in the top right on your home page of facebook.
2. On the first tab “Settings” you can see about 5 items down an area called “Linked Accounts”.
3. Simply select ALL of your available accounts and set it up.
4. You are done!

What does this mean?  In my case, since I am already logged into my Gmail by the time I open the facebook window, facebook authenticates my account from my “linked account” alleviating the pain of having to log into my facebook manually.  Completely secure and completely helpful.  Many sites are beginning to utilize this behavior and its something to take advantage of if you use more than one account daily….or hourly like me!  🙂

more:  This type of login process is an open, decentralized standard for authenticating users which can be used for access control, allowing users to log on to different services with the same digital identity where these services trust the authentication body. In many situations, it replaces the common log on process that uses a login-name and a password, by allowing a user to log in once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems.