There is increased push for Passkeys (instead of passwords), with Google now rolling out Passkeys as default sign-in option. Can someone please to me what “Passkey” is, how its different from passcode, and how it will change an average person’s login process on a daily routine basis?

Question

I think of myself as tech savvy but for some reason i either missed the memo on Passkeys, or just misunderstand how the thing works. Im reasonably sure my parents/granparents will start asking me about this stuff soon (as google / other websites push it on them), and id really like to understand it myself first so i can explain it to them as well.

Right now, to login to website/account/etc i just need to know my login (i.e. my email address, or my username) and my password. For example, “FakeDogLover”+”CatsRule123”. How is Passkey different?

In: 1799

Answer 1

A passkey is generated by a cryptographic program and while nothing is uncrackable, it’s very very very complex to crack.

It’s the equivalent of smashing your keyboard including special characters and caps 50 times instead of, per your example, ‘CatsRule123’ which is exceptionally easy to crack.

It’s like when google suggests a password to you, but the password is something like ‘Cx3t-RwsHXhso5gnt’ (I literally just pushed random keys)