You probably have a lot of passwords in your life.
Even with the help of password managers, passwords are becoming more and more of a burden for most people.
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Long gone are the days of being able to use and reuse rubbish passwords like p455w0rd123. Now, all of your online accounts need to be protected by passwords that are complex and unique.
You’ve also got to be ever vigilant in case one of your many passwords is compromised.
There’s a better solution — passkeys.
Passkeys are an authentication method for websites and apps that were first popularized by Apple in June 2022 when the company added support in iOS and MacOS. However, it’s not an Apple technology. Passkeys is a standard that’s promoted by Google, Apple, Microsoft, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the FIDO Alliance.
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Passkeys are sets of two cryptographic keys: a public key that’s registered with the online service or app, and a private key that’s stored on a device, such as a smartphone or a computer.
That might sound complicated, but passkeys have been designed to be easy to use. In fact, to log in with a passkey, you use your face, a fingerprint, or a PIN in much the same way that you unlock your smartphone.
The advantage of passkeys is that even if a hacker gets their hands on a website’s public key, your account is still locked because they don’t have access to the private key on your device.
The screenshot above proves the benefits: no passwords in sight, nothing that needs to be remembered, and nothing to accidentally hand over to a hacker.
Passkeys can also help you get around the issue of having to synchronize passwords between your devices.
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Say you normally log in to your Google account using a smartphone, but you want to log in using a laptop. That’s no problem, even if the passkey isn’t synchronized with the laptop, as long as the smartphone is within Bluetooth range of the laptop and you approve the login.
What’s even cooler is that the passkey isn’t transferred between the smartphone and the laptop. Instead, after confirming the login, you get the opportunity to create a passkey on the laptop.
No, because your biometric information is not sent to the website or app that you are accessing; instead, your biometric information is only used to unlock the passkey on your device.
Your biometric information never leaves your device.
Here are the system requirements for passkeys:
- A system running at least Windows 10, MacOS Ventura, or ChromeOS 109
- A smartphone or tablet running at least iOS 16, iPadOS 16, or Android 9
- Optional: a hardware security key with FIDO2 protocol support
The computer or mobile device you are using will also need a supported browser, such as:
- Chrome 109 or greater
- Safari 16 or greater
- Edge 109 or greater
The major tech players all have more information about how to use passkeys on their platforms: Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
You can find a list of websites that support passkeys at passkeys.io.
Some well-known websites and apps that support the technology include Adobe, Amazon, Google (where passkeys now secure over 400 million accounts), GitHub, PayPal, TikTok, Nintendo, WhatsApp, Shop by Shopify, and X. Recently, we’ve seen eBay and Uber add support for passkeys, too.
On World Password Day 2024, Microsoft rolled out passkey support for all its consumer accounts, and will roll out passkey support for signing into mobile versions of Microsoft applications over the coming months.
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Passkeys are growing in popularity, and fast.
Yes, Google is now asking users to create a passkey and to use that passkey as the default login.
Using a passkey to log in to your account is about 40% faster and a lot more secure than using passwords. Google’s reach means its decision will not only help spread the word about passkeys, but it will encourage other online services to do the same.
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In fact, Google is clear that its plan is to make “passwords a rarity, and eventually obsolete.”
Not ready to use a passkey for Google yet? You can skip this option and continue to log in to your account the old way.
Passkeys should work, whether you access a service via a browser or an app.
The experience is not universal though. For example, Amazon ha rolled out support for passkeys, but support in the app is currently only available for iOS users. These are early days for passkeys, and soon we can expect across-the-board support.
If you’re not yet ready to take the plunge and start using passkeys, the best way to experiment with how they work is to use the demo over on passkeys.io. It will guide you through the process of setting up a passkey and how to use it to log in to a site.
If you’re ready to take the plunge, a great place to start is by securing your Google Account with a passkey. Not only has Google made the process easy, but there’s also extensive documentation available.
All the big operating systems, as well as third party password managers such as Dashlane, 1Password, and Bitwarden all support passkeys. These tools should help ease the transition from passwords to passkeys.
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