Patent ID: 8793509

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving, at a computer system, a request from a web browser for a token that authorizes a third party server to access a user's data stored by a content provider server; identifying, using the computing system and from a plurality of available scopes of authorization stored on the computing system, a first scope of authorization that is specified by the token and that indicates a portion of the user's data that a third party server is permitted to access, wherein the first scope of authorization indicates part of the user's data but less than all of the user's data; identifying a previously-issued token; identifying a second scope of authorization from the plurality of scopes of authorization, the second scope of authorization specified by the previously-issued token; comparing, using the computer system, the first scope of authorization to the second scope of authorization; and transmitting the token in response to the received request based on a determination that the first scope of authorization is determined to be a subset of the second scope of authorization.