Understanding authentication concepts
Most of us have an understanding of what we mean when we say ''identity'' in everyday speech. In .NET, and coding in general, we need to be more specific before letting a user into our apps. Identity in this context encompasses multiple concepts with different actions and mechanisms along the way to establish who the user is and what they are allowed to do in our systems.
The first piece of the identity puzzle is authentication. In documentation and literature, you will often find this shortened to AuthN. Authentication is about answering the question of who you are. Analogous to the real world, this carries different levels of trust, depending on how this question is answered.
If you met someone you didn't know at a party and asked them what their name was, you would probably be happy with whatever they answered without further verification. You would, however, most likely not be happy with implementing a login function...
