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In 2022, Google, Microsoft and Apple announced that they would start working on bringing passkey to their platform. Also known as FIDO authentication, Passkey replaces passwords with a unique digital key tied to your account and eliminates the need to type or remember passwords.
The best part is that the key is stored on your device itself, uses public key cryptography and also happens to be end-to-end encrypted, meaning it is nearly impossible to phish them. While Apple introduced support for Passkeys last year with the launch of iOS 16, a recent blog post suggests that Google account owners can now use Passkeys to log in to their accounts.
It is a big step in the right direction since Passkeys offer a safer alternative to passwords and are more convenient since they work on almost all platforms and web browsers and require users to simply unlock their device with either fingerprint, face recognition or PIN.
Compared to other security measures like two-factor authentication, which helps limit security breaches but is still susceptible to phishing and targeted attacks, Passkeys is a safer alternative since it addresses all these issues.
Making a new passkey is a fairly simple and quick process. To generate passkeys, head over to myaccount.google.com and navigate to the ‘Security’ tab. Under the ‘How you sign in to Google’ section, you will see an option called ‘Passkeys’, tapping on which will take you to a new page.
Here, you can see a list of automatically created passkeys. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see a ‘Create a passkey’ option. Tap on it and the device will ask you for your PIN or biometrics. Authenticate it and you are good to go.
If you create a passkey for your Google account, it automatically becomes one of the ways to sign in to the account. Even though passkeys will replace passwords in the future, users will be able to still use their account passwords on devices that don’t support passkeys.
Moreover, using passkeys won’t require you to take out the phone every time you want to sign in. If you use multiple devices like a laptop, phone or tablet, you can create passkeys for every device.
