After supporting passwordless Windows logins for years and even allowing users to delete passwords from their accounts, Microsoft is making its biggest move yet toward a future with no passwords. Now it will ask people signing up for new accounts to only use more secure methods like passkeys, push notifications, and security keys instead, by default.
The new no-password initiative by Microsoft is accompanied by its recently launched, optimized sign-in window design with reordered steps that flow better for a passwordless and passkey-first experience.
Although current accounts won’t have to shed their passwords, new ones will try and leave them behind by not prompting you to create a password at all:
As part of this simplified UX, we’re changing the default behavior for new accounts. Brand new Microsoft accounts will now be “passwordless by default.” New users will have several passwordless options for signing into their account and they’ll never need to enroll a password. Existing users can visit their account settings to delete their password.
With today’s changes, Microsoft is renaming “World Password Day” to “World Passkey Day” instead and pledges to continue its work implementing passkeys over the coming year. This time last year, the company implemented passkeys into consumer accounts. Microsoft says it’s seeing “nearly a million passkeys registered every day,” and that passkey users have a 98 percent success rate of signing in versus 32 percent for password-based accounts.
Passkeys can replace traditional passwords with your device’s own authentication methods. That way, you can sign in to Gmail, PayPal, or iCloud just by activating Face ID on your iPhone, your Android phone’s fingerprint sensor, or with Windows Hello on a PC.
Built on WebAuthn (or Web Authentication) tech, two different keys are generated when you create a passkey: one stored by the website or service where your account is, and a private key stored on the device you use to verify your identity.
Of course, if passkeys are stored on your device, what happens if it gets broken or lost? Since passkeys work across multiple devices, you may have a backup available. Many services that support passkeys will also reauthenticate to your phone number or email address, or to a hardware security key, if you have one.
Apple’s and Google’s password vaults already support passkeys, and so do password managers like 1Password and Dashlane. 1Password has also created an online directory listing services that allow users to sign in using a passkey.
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