Patent ID: 8474028

Claim:
A method of providing an unregistered user access to a resource that requires an indication of approval by an authenticated user who is registered to the resource, the method comprising: receiving, by an authentication system, a request from the unregistered user to access the resource during a user session by supplying an identifier for the resource over a first channel; creating, by the authentication system, a session record including the identifier and a token value for the user session; transmitting, by the authentication system, the token value to the unregistered user over the first channel; receiving, by the authentication system, the token value from the authenticated user over a second channel, wherein the token value is provided to the authenticated user by the unregistered user; verifying, by the authentication system, that the identifier belongs to the authenticated user, wherein the identifier is retrieved from the session record by the authentication system based on the token value; receiving, by the authentication system, the indication of approval from the authenticated user to allow the unregistered user to access the resource referenced by the identifier; and upgrading, by the authentication system, the user session to indicate that the unregistered user is granted access to the resource.