Ask HN: Can Twitter determine your client via api calls made?

1 pointRileyJames1 comment

I'm using twitter as an example, but I'd like to know more generally as well.

From twitters end how do they tell the difference between: 1) API call made from a user on the website 2) API call made from a user on the mac client 3) API call made from a user on the ios app 4) API call made from a an application I have built

Cheers.

View on HN

Each application - their website included - uses its own set of API credentials to make calls, thus identifying a client is trivial.

Pedantic edit: version 1 of the API supported some anonymous calls, but that version is very close to being dropped. All API calls to version 1.1, though, must be authenticated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com