I’ve avoided “passkeys” like the plague, but with Google [promising a password-less future](https://safety.google/authentication/passkey/) and Apple [forcefully moving people to passkeys going forward](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/10125/?time=258), I guess it’s time to figure out what they are.
I consider myself a tech person, but the more I hear about these *passkeys*, the less I understand. Apple’s [overview](https://developer.apple.com/passkeys/) says that they’ll be used “alongside” passwords, so I don’t get what’s being **replaced**, and why the hell we need them. Fido Alliance (the folks that apparently invented the damn thing) says that [passwords are a problem](https://fidoalliance.org/passkeys/), but reading this, it doesn’t seem like it’s **my** problem they talk about.
What I **do** understand though, is that one day I’ve had someone walk into my hotel room in Poland, and walk out with my laptop and cell phone while I was asleep^1.
**So, overnight, I ended up without access to any of my devices or phone number abroad**.
Luckily, because I was still in the password-ful past, I could log into my email and Skype from hotel’s computer, and let my wife know that I need some help.
what this scenario wood look like in the future when everything gets switched to passkeys.
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^(**[1]:**) ^(I have forgotten to lock the door – learn from my mistake. To Krakow police’s credit, they *actually caught the thief* several months later.)
In: Technology
>ELI5 what this scenario wood look like in the future when everything gets switched to passkeys.
If you lose your passkey you do exactly what you did and use a password as a backup
The difference is that your backup password can be complex and stored somewhere safe in case you need it and you use your passkey for everyday authentication (which is much more secure than a password) . The password is never entered into sites until you need it so it can’t be captured by a keylogger or phished from you
If only a password is used, most people would use something easy to remember, or even worse, reuse the same password .
Almost all “hacks” are people being phished for their credentials by clicking a link to login (much harder to capture the login details with a passkey) or their reused password is in a data breach for a site somewhere so all other logins are compromised
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