Question

I am building a twitter application that is currently using the classic login instead of OAuth. Does Twitter have any plans of deprecating this? I chose not to do OAuth because it is still being piloted as a beta.

Answer 1

I doubt there are any plans to deprecate the old API, because there are hundreds of applications which are designed to use it. Even though it’s safe to use the old API, if I were you, I’d transition to OAuth due to user security concerns. OAuth is more secure than the plain API, and provides fewer ways for an attacker to obtain the user’s password.

From the Twitter API documentation:

OAuth is the Twitter preferred method
of authentication moving forward.
While we have no plans in the near
term to require OAuth, new
applications should consider it best
practice to develop for OAuth. We
eventually would like to suspend Basic
Auth support. However we realize that
Basic Auth has been a large part of
the API’s success, and that the
barrier to entry if OAuth is the only
solution is substantially higher. Many
applications rely on Twitter accounts
as their means of account management.
Additionally, Basic Auth allows a
developer with a command line, cURL,
and his account credentials to start
poking at Twitter data. There are
still a number of archetectural use
cases to work through before we
consider the deprication of Basic
Auth. Before any changes begin to
happen, we will discuss them with the
community through the support
channels, and give at least 6 months
lead time before making any policy
changes.