Login with Google sheets safe?

General Discussion
1

Hi.
I was curious to know

  1. How safe/ unsafe is it to use Google sheet for user login (eg. Column1- email, column 2 - password) into an app.

  2. I think at the peak the app may have less than 1000 users. Small children mainly.

  3. Would an app that uses a simple Google sheet to validate it's users be accepted in playstore.?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge / experience in advance.

2

What do you mean ?

What security measures will you have in place with Google?
For starters you would need a private spreadsheet and a secure method for your app to access this private spreadsheet. Will a user only access their own data ?
Also have you considered google's quotas on a private google account for that level of users ?

What security measures would you have on the app?
Encryption ?
No secure data on the app at all?
You say it is for children, your privacy actions and policy will need to be extra tight.

This is just for starters, there is more....

1 Like
3

Whilst it "could" be done on a google sheet.....

Google's Firebase (or Firestore) is a much more suitable platform, especially given it has a built-in user authentication and verification method, and it is scalable.

1 Like
4

never store a password in plain text in any database... always store its hash value and if you want to compare the entered password with the stored password just compare the hash values...

There is a fundamental difference between Hashing and Encryption algorithms, see this stackoverflow answer: Hashing is one way. You can not get your data/string from a hash code. Encryption is 2 way - you can decrypt again the encrypted string if you have the key with you.

to create a password hash, see my Tools Extension.

Taifun

Trying to push the limits! Snippets, Tutorials and Extensions from Pura Vida Apps by icon24 Taifun.

1 Like
5

Wow, good food for thought.

Of course I dodn't know about the issues regarding security. Just discovered about hashcode possibility, it's new to. I will see how it works.

The app is just a quiz for students.
All I wanted that each Student have his own
ID to login mainly to record their performance scores so they know where they stand on a subject. Just storing name, password and scores.

Scalability - I was thinking if students like it and more students start using I would move to firebase at that stage.

But, yes I am going to stick with firebase. It's better and created for the purpose.

Thanks for valuable inputs Tim.

Many more juvenile questions to come.:pray:

6

Taifun, thanks. "Hash Value" new words in my life. I am going to read up and learn about that.
Also a wow, for the tools extension. It is a pocket knife of good useful stuff. Wow.

Thanks again for your time and knowledge shared. :pray: