# Curling With Basic Auth Credentials I often use `curl` to take a quick look at the responses of particular endpoints. If I try to `curl` a URL that is secured with HTTP Basic Authentication, this is what the response looks like: ```bash $ curl staging.example.com HTTP Basic: Access denied. ``` I can give the credentials to `curl` so that it can plug them in as it makes the request using the `-u` (or `--user`) flag: ```bash $ curl -u username:password staging.example.com ... ``` If I don't want the password showing up in my command-line history, I can just provide the username and `curl` will prompt me for my password: ```bash $ curl -u username staging.example.com Enter host password for user 'username': ... ``` See `man curl` for more details.