What are passkeys? The life-changing magic of going passwordless
You’re probably someone with a lot of passwords in their 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 both complex and unique.
And you’ve got to be ever vigilant in case one of your many passwords is compromised.
There’s got to be a better solution. And there is.
Passkeys.
Passkeys are an authentication method for websites and apps that was first popularized by Apple back in June 2022 when the company added support for passkeys (yes, it’s a common noun so it is written lowercase) in iOS and MacOS. However, it’s not an Apple technology. It’s a standard that’s promoted by Google, Apple, Microsoft, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the FIDO Alliance.
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As for how it works, passkeys are cryptographic keys and each passkey consists of two 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 all sounds complicated, but passkeys have been designed to be easy to use. In fact, to log in with a passkey you’ll be using your face, a fingerprint, or a PIN in much the same way that you unlock your smartphone.
Passkeys in action Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
See? No passwords in sight. Nothing that needs to be remembered, and nothing to accidentally hand over to a hacker.
Passkeys can also get around the issue of having to synchronize passwords between your devices.
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Say you normally log into your Google account using a smartphone, but you want to log in using a laptop. This is 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 the user approves the login.
What’s even cooler is that the passkey isn’t transferred between the smartphone and laptop, but instead after confirming the login the user will get the opportunity to create a passkey on the laptop.
No.
No biometric information is sent to the website or app that you are accessing; instead, this biometric information is only used to unlock the passkey on your device.
The biometric information never leaves the 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
Your computer or mobile device you will be 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 — Apple, Google, and Microsoft — all have more information specific to how to use passkeys on their platforms.
You can find a list of websites that support passkeys over on passkeys.io.
Some well-known websites and apps that support the technology include Adobe, Google, PayPal, TikTok, Nintendo, and GitHub.
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 using it to log into a site.
Using passkeys.io Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
If you’re ready to take the plunge, a great place to start is by securing your Google Account with one. Not only has Google made the process easy, but there’s also extensive documentation available.
Two that I’ve tried are Dashlane and 1Password.
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