title: Typical app user authentication using AWS
body: <p>My main question is what is the typical way mobile apps authenticate users? I know that AmazonCognito is used to sync userdata once you receive a token, but that token is simply a set of access rules, right? Which has nothing to do with a particular user (just the fact that they are an authenticated user in general).</p>
  
  <p>But before even that, there needs to be a way to authenticate a username/pass that the user signed up for so that you can retrieve the token. In almost all of the documentation, they use Facebook/Google/etc as examples of third party providers, and there IS an example of setting up your own 3rd party provider, but this all requires your own backend to service that. C</p>
  
  <p>onsidering that there may be many users trying to user the app and authenticate, does it not seem like a bad idea to set up a backend somewhere else? And is there a way to integrate this part into AWS as well so that there is no custom backend work? How is this typically done?</p>
  
  <p>Site node: I'm using Android SDK at the moment.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks :)</p>