I think Nat’s diagram about the problems of doing pseudo authentication with 
OAuth is being taken out of context.

The refresh token dosen’t expire, it is revoked by the user or system.  In some 
cases refresh tokens are automatically revoked if the users session to the AS 
ends.  I think AOL typically revokes refresh tokens when sessions terminate.

OpenID Connect provides a separate id_token with a independent lifetime from 
the refresh token.  A client may keep a refresh token for a much longer time 
than the user has a login session with the AS.

Refresh tokens are typically used by confidential clients that are using a 
client secret in combination with the refresh token for getting a new access 
token.

By design access tokens should be short lived as the AS is expected to have a 
way of revoking refresh tokens but not access tokens.
A access token that dosen't expire , and can’t be revoked is not a good idea.

John B.


> On Aug 24, 2015, at 2:41 AM, Donghwan Kim <flowersinthes...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> According to Figure 2 from http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749#section-1.5 
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749#section-1.5>, refresh token can be used 
> to refresh an expired access token without requesting resource owner to sign 
> in again (uncomfortable experience). However, if it's true, isn't it that 
> refresh token might be used to request a new access token even years later? 
> and then isn't refresh token the same with access token which never expires?
> 
> I intended to use refresh token to implement persistent login by sending a 
> refresh request before issued access token expires (expires_in runs out). But 
> if refresh token works even if access token expired already, sending a 
> refresh request on application start up would be enough.
> 
> So I'm not sure what I'm missing about refresh token as well as how to 
> implement persistent login using it (you can regard authentication here 
> pseudo-authentication illustrated in 
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/OpenIDvs.Pseudo-AuthenticationusingOAuth.svg
>  
> <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/OpenIDvs.Pseudo-AuthenticationusingOAuth.svg>).
>  What is the lifetime of refresh token?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- Donghwan
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