No More Passwords: Amazon Is Latest Tech Site to Adopt Passkeys

pcmag.com:

Amazon users can start ditching old-school passwords. The e-commerce giant is now offering support for passkeys, which offer a smartphone-like experience when signing on. 

“Customers can now set up passkeys in their Amazon settings, allowing them to easily use the same face, fingerprint, or PIN used to unlock their device,” the company said in the announcement. 

Amazon’s passkey support is already available today on web browsers. On mobile, the company is rolling out passkey support for iOS on the Amazon shopping app. Android support will arrive further down the line. 

A growing number of tech companies are adopting passkeys in an effort to phase out traditional passwords, which have long been a security risk since they can be stolen or guessed. Last week, WhatsApp began rolling out passkey support for Android while Google is starting to nudge users to try out passkeys too. 

The security system represents an improvement over traditional logins because it drops requiring the user to come up with a password. Instead, the technology creates a unique, private key that’s bound to the hardware, whether it be your laptop or smartphone. 

The user doesn’t need to memorize the passkey. To sign in, a website will merely issue a digital challenge, which the private key onboard the hardware can authenticate. The user only needs to scan their fingerprint, face, or type in a PIN code to unlock access to the passkey, initiating the authentication process, much like how existing smartphones can work. However, no password data or biometric information is ever exchanged and uploaded to the internet.

As a result, “passkeys are not susceptible to phishing attacks, making them more secure than features like one-time codes in text messages,”