How Amazon Location Service works with unauthenticated users

Many scenarios for using Amazon Location Service, including showing maps on the web or in a mobile application, require allowing access to users who haven't signed in with IAM. For these unauthenticated scenarios, you have two options.

• Use API keys – To grant access to unauthenticated users, you can create API Keys that give read-only access to your Amazon Location Service resources. This is useful in a case where you do not want to authenticate every user. For example, a web application. For more information about API keys, see Allowing unauthenticated guest access to your application using API keys.

• Use Amazon Cognito – An alternative to API keys is to use Amazon Cognito to grant anonymous access. Amazon Cognito allows you to create a richer authorization with IAM policy to define what can be done by the unauthenticated users. For more information about using Amazon Cognito, see Allowing unauthenticated guest access to your application using Amazon Cognito.

For an overview of providing access to unauthenticated users, see Granting access to Amazon Location Service.