The day is coming where we'll longer need passwords on the internet

pcgamer.com:

Passwords have got to be one of the weirdest things we've integrated into our daily lives. Almost every site you visit asks for a login, so we're left guessing which of the piles of passwords it wants. You might have a password manager to help you deal with all this, which usually needs its own unique password, but do tend to be safer when hacked. As a kid I thought passwords were relegated to fiction, as likely to crop up in ordinary life as quicksand. While they're a constant part of my daily life now, passwords may soon be sent back to the storybooks where they belong.

The Guardian(opens in new tab) reports Google is set to begin rolling out passkey technology—a replacement for passwords that will hopefully make everyone's lives a little easier. This tech isn't brand new, Apple and Microsoft have both already started using it, but a giant like Google bringing passkeys to its account system could well mark the beginning of the end for passwords.

Rather than require you remember a string of characters, passkey works by allocating a cryptographic private key to a particular device. This lets you use biometrics logins or pin codes to manage logging into services from that device. It can also use apps to share this key to multiple devices, or users can create a unique one per item. Google checks this key against its own stored public key to make sure you're you.

This shifts all the hassle of remembering complicated strings to your device rather than your brain. If you're logging into a website on your phone, then your phone will check your stored key against the website's unique login challenge to generate a unique signature. The signature can then be verified by Google against its public key, and log you in. This means