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by IggleSniggle 1477 days ago
As a user the problem I run into with some frequency is passwordless login where the waiting session loses its “waiting” status because I switched the active application in iOS from my browser to my email and back again. When I get back, the page for whatever reason (refresh after being backgrounded?) requires a new auth attempt.

A wrinkle in this complaint is that in most scenarios I don’t especially want a browser tab to be able to hold onto a persistent session while it’s closed due to privacy reasons, regardless of where that session state is held (and I realize there are a number of options).
3 comments
londons_explore 1477 days ago
> (refresh after being backgrounded?)

This is a problem on low memory devices - the page gets forced to refresh because the system ran out of RAM. The iPhone 13 only has 4GB of RAM, and with many apps requiring 2+GB, it is frequent a web page can't stay loaded in the background.

Most android devices have 8GB plus RAM, so shouldn't hit that issue, although it still happens on very low end devices.

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IggleSniggle 1477 days ago
They can take my iPhone 7 and its 2GB of RAM over its dead body.
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pritambaral 1474 days ago
This took me a bit of time to realise, but well-designed software can avoid this problem rather simply: Combine the Magic Link with a short-code that can be manually typed into the browser session attempting to login. This short-code can then be prominently displayed in the email header and/or early on in the email body, so a user can simply read it off the notification that the email would generate. No need to switch apps from browser to email.
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couchand 1477 days ago
A simple workaround for the implementation is to redirect you to a URL with the code hashed as a query parameter.
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IggleSniggle 1477 days ago
Yes, I was thinking about that, as something like a TOTP. But that needs to be done via DNS-over-HTTPS or DNS-over-TLS or else the code can be sniffed by a MITM since the URL is sent in the clear, at which point you’re back to the problem of persistent TLS anyway.

Edit: In fact, nevermind. My thinking on that was flawed. I think you’re right, that should be fine, as long as the DNS is encrypted.

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