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Consent screen
- Agent Ops
- Standard term
A consent screen is the page your account provider shows when an app asks to connect to your account. It names the app and lists the access it wants before you approve.
The screen comes from your account provider, such as Google, so the app never sees your password. Approving it gives the app a token, a digital key limited to the listed permissions.
Where you’ll meet it
Your team starts trying an AI note-taker for meetings. When you click Connect calendar, a page from your work account appears. It names the note-taker, shows your work email address, and asks to read your email, manage your contacts, and see, edit, and delete all your calendars.
What to do
Taking notes needs your meeting times and links, and little else on that list. Click Cancel and look for a calendar-only option in the setup, or ask your IT team whether the tool is approved. Apps you've already allowed are listed under connected apps in your account's security settings.
Easy to mix up
A permission scope is one kind of access, such as reading your calendar, that applies every time the app acts. The consent screen shows only when the app asks for that access.
Check yourself
An email invites you to try “Docs Helper.” Its link opens your account provider's own consent page, at the provider's real address, asking to let Docs Helper read and send your email. Does that page show the app is trustworthy?
Go deeperAccess from one approval can last months and survive a password change
The screen belongs to OAuth 2.0 (Open Authorization), published as a standard in 2012. Many providers also issue a refresh token, a longer-lived key the app trades for fresh short-lived ones, so access can go on long after the one approval.
Attacks that send people to approve a lookalike app are called “consent phishing.” The attacker ends up holding a token, so changing the password may leave the access in place, and removing the app from the account's connected apps is what ends it. In workplaces, an administrator can also approve an app for everyone, and then no individual screen appears.