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by jagged-chisel 760 days ago
IMO…

To “log in” is to convert the username/password pair (or API key, or whatever) into a smaller token with an expiration. Doesn’t matter of it’s put in a cookie in my browser, held in memory by some other API client, etc.

Aside: Why bother even doing that? Because every time you transmit the credential, there’s the possibility of leaking. We would rather leak the token that has an expiration.