Is it possible to clone a repo from GitHub without an account?

I'm hosting my company's interview project on Github. We will have candidates clone the repo and work with it on their local machine during the interview itself. They never have to push code to the repo.

I have the code in a Github repo but the repo is private, because I do not want people being able to search the internet for "Company X Interview" and have this repo come up. We will send the candidates a URL to clone the repo immediately before the actual interview.

The problem I'm having is that this seems to require a GitHub account. I would hope most of my candidates coming in for an interview are on GitHub but I don't want it to be a requirement.

Is there some way I can configure this repo's security settings such that it is still a private repo but can be cloned by anyone who has the URL (without needing an account)?

1 Answer

There are two main ways to accomplish this:

• Authenticating with SSH
  This is described in the articleConnecting to GitHub with SSHbut is more complicated to setup.

• Using HTTPS and providing your username and password in the URL.
  Example for a private repository:

   git clone 

  If you use 2FA to secure your GitHub account then you’ll need to use a personal access token instead of a password, as explained in the articleCreating a personal access token.