Passkeys will help Google Chrome users stay secure
Nowadays, keeping your login credentials safe is crucial. There are so many people out there who will definitely try to steal account information for whatever service you have. This, obviously, is where passwords come in handy. However, passwords do have their drawbacks. For starters, a person can steal the password. If they get your password down in plain text and letters, they can sign into your accounts and wreak havoc. Another issue is one that we’ve all dealt with: forgetting our passwords. Forgetting how to log into a service is tedious and annoying. Many of us have begrudgingly clicked the “forgot password” button more than we care to admit. So, Google, along with other companies, partnered to bring passkeys to the public. A passkey is a unique identifier that a service can use to identify you. This identifier is stored locally on your device. Also, it can be stored on an external device such as an SD card or a flash drive. When you want to log into a service, the site will use the new passkey API to access that identifier. Once the service identifies that it’s you, you’ll be able to log in. Think of it sort of like trying to unlock a phone. You can use a pin, but if another person sees you enter your PIN, then that person can unlock your phone at will. However, if you secure your phone with a fingerprint, there’s no way that the other person can emulate that.
We see this in action
There are a few examples of passkeys in action. For starters, if you store your passkey on your phone, and you want to log into a service on your computer, it will generate a QR code. You’ll scan that QR code with your phone and the service will be able to communicate with it. We see another service accessing the passkey on a person’s flash drive. You can use passkeys if you’re using the stable version of Chrome M108. You can use it on Android, iOS, or Windows 11 computers. We might be far from eliminating the password, but this does bring us one step closer.
