Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain

https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/2079787406300266743

by ksec • 8 hours ago

409 549 8 hours ago

https://xcancel.com/nikitabier/status/2079787406300266743

It just so happened that Microsoft sent an email today to our M365 tenant administrators that SMS and voice for 2FA is being removed 1-Feb-2027 and that automatic enrollment to passkeys starts 1-Sep-2026. Bring on the passkey overlords. Although, LLMs say that passkeys are superior to passwords since it includes a public/private key setup with the private key saved to a device that requires a PIN or biometric to access the private key.

SirFatty2• 7 hours ago

That's if you're using Authenticator.

josteink• 7 hours ago

Clarification: Microsoft Authenticator.

You can’t use any random password-manager with passkey support.

I use Bitwarden for everything and have to have MS Authenticator installed just for this 1 login.

Super annoying.

voidmain00012• 3 hours ago

The use of a passkey doesn’t require Authenticator or other OTP app. Gemini said that an OTP app can be used as a vault for the passkey, but it’s not the mechanism that permits the check of the private key. Rather, that’s the PIN or biometric. Now, perhaps I don’t understand your statement and you can clarify if that’s the case.

pjc503• 6 hours ago

How is one supposed to let an LLM log in with passkey?

bflesch4• 7 hours ago

My tinfoil hat take is that there's significant interest to keep everything digital, always-online and connected to the major providers, so it can easily be snooped by five eyes using their omnipresent backdoors.

Passkey biometrics also allow you to confirm certain person is holding the device right in this very moment, and not receiving a TOTP via walkie-talkie. Especially important for kinetic sanctions.

If you check out their Terramare group of companies those guys are still using typewriters. Unless you're US/UK millionaire I recommend to stay as analog as possible with physical password book and TOTP/yubikey.

Same with the push for "post-quantum crypto" and elliptic curves. I feel my systems get significantly more attention when using 8k RSA than any of its modern replacements. While I love wireguard the transition to ED25519 felt way too smooth..

forsalebypwner2• 7 hours ago

the fact that some nebulous "group of companies" still uses typewriters does not mean that all modern cryptography is flawed

bflesch4• 7 hours ago

Diversity is resilience; no need to standardize on curves or "post-quantum" IBM bullshit if other approaches still work perfectly fine.

And if the pros are using typewriters in 2026 it's not a signal for me to put even more eggs into the US-megacorp dominated basket who treat me like an NPC who can be droned at will.

coldpie4• 7 hours ago

Passkeys are a vector for locking your logins to Big Tech ecosystems. They support device attestation, which means the service you are logging in to can require you to only use certain Passkey clients such as those provided by Google, Apple or Microsoft. The Passkey spec authors also maintain a list of "naughty clients"[1], which are clients that allow the user to manage their own data how they want. Services could choose to block those clients for "security reasons," justifying the decision to force you to use one of the Big Tech providers.

Until device attestation is removed or strongly curtailed in the spec, I suggest you do not create any Passkeys. Which sucks, because it's otherwise a pretty cool tech.

[1] https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/known-issues/

More sources here: https://www.smokingonabike.com/2025/01/04/passkey-marketing-...

datakan2• 7 hours ago

Passkeys are just SSH keys in how they work. We've been doing this since the 90's. The only people that use SSH keys are the Linux savvy users and those who are forced to via an enterprise solution for vaulting.

The average person doesn't know anything about this stuff nor do they care. I also have yet to see a Passkey solution that didn't also have a password on it and a nice little box letting people choose to use the password instead of the passkey. They just added a new layer on top of all the old ones and created confusion. Now people use password and passkey interchangably in conversations and no one knows what they are talking about.

account42• 7 hours ago

SMS 2FA was also optional everywhere until it wasn't.

NetMageSCW7• 4 hours ago

It is still optional most places.

cpburns200912• 7 hours ago

I can find my ssh keys in `~/.ssh`. No such place exists for passkeys.

microflash3• 7 hours ago

It depends on the app you’re using to save passkeys. Use Keepass and it saves the passkeys into kdbx file (similar to SSH keys).

datakan2• 6 hours ago

I can pull up all my passkeys in 1Password or Bitwarden without issue.

kingstnap2• 6 hours ago

Thats because the people behind passkeys are paternalistic and don't trust users. I had an argument with one of them a few months ago.

https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189749#47193048

My read on it all is that FIDO is stuck in some sort of groupthink. They don't feel the boots on the ground confusion around passkeys being opaque. They only care about phishing and being called "insecure" and don't care about anything else. Hence why WebAuthn has additional weird anti features like AAGUID for provider authentication.

Another one of those ridiculous threads is saying you gotta have support for nonsense like user presence verification.

https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10406

juancn6• 7 hours ago

I would feel a lot better using SSH keys rather than passkeys. At least those are understandable.

izacus4• 7 hours ago

They're literally the same thing, what are you on about?

aPoCoMiLogin3• 31 minutes ago

this is false equivalency. in poland we have similar to passkey implementation in government issued application - mobywatel [0] that allows to login to government websites. in 2022 according to published data it had almost 9m installations [1] and a lot of them are old ppl, so its not like only neckbeards would know this ancient technology

sure there are some issues sometimes (outages and others), but most of the time they work like charm and solve a lot of issues with login+password issues.

- [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.nask.mobywa...

- [1] https://dane.gov.pl/en/dataset/2919/resource/43845,mobywatel...

IceHegel• 7 hours ago

I think there are probably sinister motives behind some of the push to pass keys, but you'd think that if that were true, they would make it really quite easy to add one and to use.

That is not the case. The entire setup/enrollment/add a passkey to your account processing is DMV inspired.

postalrat• 7 hours ago

Its a lot easier to track email and phone numbers used across multiple sites than it is passkey used on multiple sites.

gortok3• 7 hours ago

I do not know how to use a Passkey in a way that won’t impede how I log in to systems. I’ve been in tech for 26 years, and I understand the Public/private key behind what a Passkey is. Here’s what I don’t understand:

I access a website through at least four different devices (my iPad, iPhone, Windows Desktop computer, and MacBook Pro) and three different browsers on each device (Brave, Firefox, Safari) , and I use LastPass. If I accidentally set up a passkey on my phone (let’s say I use Safari one day instead of my go-to, Brave), can I still log in without that passkey on other devices? Is there a way to ensure that passkey can be used on other devices? Can I add another passkey on another device? How many passkeys can I set up for a particular site/app? I have at least 6 different combination of browser/devices in use.

I don’t want to use Passkeys because I don’t the answers to those questions, and I don’t know whether each website/app that has set up Passkeys has decided the answers to those questions in the same way as the others. For now, I’m going to stick with LastPass and use Passwords; because no matter whether I lose my device or not or whether I’m on my own devices or not, I can be sure I’ll be able to get into a site/app.

Edit: One final consideration, my spouse and I share user/name passwords for some things (notably Pandora and our Amazon Prime account) since they don’t handle things like family logins well; how do both my wife and I use amazon or Pandora with passkeys? Do we each set up passkeys? How do I get her Pass if that’s not an option?

cpburns200912• 7 hours ago

This is the main reason I've avoided passkeys. I have these exact questions and there's no a clear explanation given for these. I don't want to lose access to important accounts.

dijit2• 7 hours ago

Agreed, it's the exact same as me, I haven't seen someone put it into such succint words before, so bravo.

I think the reason is because I've anchored passkeys into my understanding of how 2FA works, and the pain of migrating 2FA from one phone to another.

So, I don't want to bother with it.

pas6• 4 hours ago

there's no a clear explanation

there's. it depends on how the site implemented passkeys.

I'm using multiple devices and passkeys via keepassXC. I haven't lost access or even got locked out of any accounts.

but it's like 2FA, and almost all sites have a clean fallback (backup codes) for 2FA.

jesseendahl5• 3 hours ago

This is the #1 most common misconception I see about passkeys. They do not make it more likely that you will lose access to your accounts. They actually have nothing to do with account recovery. They are just a stronger primary factor than a password.

Most providers continue to offer email-based recovery in the case that the end-user loses access to their primary factor, regardless of whether the primary factor is a password or a passkey.

And email based account recovery does not make the security advantages of passkeys disappear, which are:

- credential that's guaranteed to be unique

- credential that's guaranteed to be strong

- credential that cannot be phished (due to cryptographic binding to the domain at the time of credential creation)

- changes the incentives for compromising servers (there's nothing worth stealing from the server -- only public keys)

- if/when an app/website transitions to retiring password-based authN, then it will entirely eliminates credential stuffing attacks

And if the account recovery scenario in question is your Gmail or Apple account, then you would need to go through their account recovery flows regardless of whether you were using a password or a passkey:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7682439?hl=en https://support.apple.com/en-us/118574

brentm• 3 hours ago

If you use something like 1Password it's very easy. It stores your Passkey and it syncs cross device. It's another thing but once it's set up it's less of a pain than using authenticator apps or having to find some random iPad that Google popped up an approval prompt on.

wadim• 7 hours ago

I'm using bitwarden, but it's possible to use passkeys from multiple devices and if it's not available for whatever reason, you can just login with username/password/token/biological probe/whatever you used before. As an example: GitLab gives you both options right from the start, so you can use whatever you fancy in that particular moment.

FireBeyond• 7 hours ago

Did [someone from the Working Group] ever back down from their implied threat to blacklist Bitwarden for allowing for the sharing/export of passkeys?

That really rubbed me the wrong way, and smacked very heavily of "the big players (MSFT, AAPL, GOOG) can do this - you can't".

mingus88• 7 hours ago

It’s really not that hard.

Most of your devices are in the Apple ecosystem and when you are prompted to create a passphrase it will ask you to put it in your iCloud Keychain. Boom, now it is available across all of those

This is how it will work for most people who don’t care about security and just casually use their devices. My boomer mom does this. It’s better than the notebook full of handwritten passwords she was using.

You have chosen lastpass and a multi-ecosystem environment with windows and multiple browsers on each. You have chosen complexity and this is not a limitation of passsphrases as they have been designed for a more common use case.

I use Linux and apple. I have chosen protonpass for my vault. I just tell my OS to save the passkey there and everything works pretty well. If not, my password is right there as fallback. It’s really not that hard.

juancn6• 7 hours ago

What if I lose all my apple devices? House break-in and they steal my mac and my phone?

You're basically fucked even if you buy a new one because you need one of the other two to log in.

coldpie4• 7 hours ago

Proton Pass is on the official Passkey client naughty list[1]. I hope the services you log in to don't choose to ban it because of those big, scary X's.

[1] https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/known-issues/

juancn6• 7 hours ago

Same here, also what if I lose the device?

I can safely write down a password on a piece of paper and keep it somewhere phyisically safe.

Passkeys and 2FA are a usability nightmare if you need to recover, or all the security vanishes if you put usable recovery mechanisms for the passkey or the second factor.

varispeed2• 7 hours ago

Sounds like something security services would love people to use. Instead of using wrench to extract the password - and distressed person may lose memory, they can just locate the passkey.

izacus4• 7 hours ago

You do the same as you do when you lose your SSH key. Restore from backup and move on with your life.

Why is there so much misinformation nonsense around passkeys?

pas6• 4 hours ago

password managers do the backup for you based on how you set them up (eg. to your google drive, or to a simple SFTP/FTPS/S3 URI)

those that don't have this built-in (eg. KeePassXC) recommend using Dropbox or some external sync mechanism

but the keys are stored in a file, which you can back up.

all the security vanishes if you put usable recovery mechanisms for the passkey or the second factor

no, not at all. it still gives you better UX, because when you use the passkey you know it's the site you want to log in to. (because there's mutual authentication.)

Telaneo9• 4 hours ago

2FA secrets can be backed up, and everyone should do that, for the same reason you'd want to do it with passwords.

Passkeys can too, but there it's even more obfuscated than with 2FA.

jesseendahl5• 3 hours ago

Passkeys and 2FA are a usability nightmare if you need to recover, or all the security vanishes if you put usable recovery mechanisms for the passkey or the second factor.

Most providers continue to offer email-based recovery in the case that the end-user loses access to their primary factor, regardless of whether the primary factor is a password or a passkey.

And email based account recovery does not make the security advantages of passkeys disappear, which are:

- credential that's guaranteed to be unique

- credential that's guaranteed to be strong

- credential that cannot be phished (due to cryptographic binding to the domain at the time of credential creation)

- changes the incentives for compromising servers (they're nothing worth stealing from the server -- only public keys)

- if/when an app/website transitions to retiring password-based authN, then it will entirely eliminates credential stuffing attacks

darknavi• 7 hours ago

Why not use passkeys in LastPass? Then the passkey travels with you to your devices/apps.

microflash3• 7 hours ago

You can store your passkeys in Bitwarden or Keepass vault. Then you can use them through Bitwarden or Keepass apps on any other device. Been using passkeys like this for several years, and it works pretty seamlessly. With Keepass vault, I even have an offline copy as backup.

RHSeeger3• 7 hours ago

If you store the key in Bitwarden or Keepass, what makes it different from a password?

owaislone• 7 hours ago

Answer to almost all of your questions is that it entirely depends on the service what kind of auth implementation they offer. I personally have completely adopted passkeys and use them with every service that allows it.

I use ProtonPass and have made it the default password store on every device and browser. This way all passkeys get stored in proton and I can login from any other personal device with proton setup.

summermusic2• 7 hours ago

...it entirely depends on the service what kind of auth implementation they offer.

I think that's exactly the problem. These are all answerable questions, but getting those answers is confusing for most people.

bflesch4• 7 hours ago

Passkeys basically MITM the 2FA process so that they can track and deplatform you with a single click across all your accounts.

The biometric verification also allows to confirm that a certain person is holding the device, and they can easily be matched to existing passport/travel databases.

Great system if the good guys have it, a bit problematic if it's abused by nepo kids to hide their crimes.

vel0city7• 7 hours ago

Passkeys basically MITM the 2FA process so that they can track and deplatform you with a single click across all your accounts.

I use passkeys with a physical authenticator. How do "they" track and deplatform me with a single click? Can you explain?

notatoad• 7 hours ago

these questions all have easy answers that could be quite easily discovered by simply trying to use passkeys, instead of trying to find reasons not to use them.

cpburns200912• 7 hours ago

You shouldn't be forced to discover what capabilities exist by brute force. Just freaking explain it.

pjc503• 6 hours ago

But since there's a potential nonzero risk of permanent account loss, I don't want to experiment, and since I can still log in with email/password I'm going to keep doing that.

giancarlostoro5• 7 hours ago

If you save it via Passwords app, it'll be iOS / macOS mainly, but you can unlock with any Apple device that supports Passkey / Passwords app (so likely modern + reasonably updated) the easiest. If you want it to work "everywhere" then you CAN use your iOS / MacOS Passkey, it will show you a QR code, some places poorly support this, I believe both devices need bluetooth, and then it will authenticate it.

Linux is the only oddball here, I had issues getting this flow to work.

If the UX for Passkey improves, I will go all-in on it, I'm at the point I'd love to just completely block passwords from accessing my account, unless I explicitly enable it temporarily by logging on via passkey, I wish some sites would let me lock my account to this level, it would be better. Passwords feel like they just wind up all over the web.

Weirdly enough you can store multiple passkeys for a given domain, which can get confusing in some cases if they dont have normal names tied to them.

Edit: Originally I thought Passwords from Apple was iOS / macOS only, but its not! So I have been editing my original message, sorry for the confusion, I had forgotten that I can login on Windows with my Passkeys from Apple's ecosystem.

As another poster noted, you can transfer them out of Apple's ecosystem too!

reddalo2• 7 hours ago

Linux is the only oddball here, I had issues getting this flow to work.

Take a guess why.

Passkeys are just a trick for vendor lock-in disguised as a security practice.

0x1d72• 7 hours ago

Windows also has the Apple Password app.

https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud-windows/set-up-icloud...

throw0101d2• 6 hours ago

Also note this from the spec:

A Public Key Credential Source’s generating authenticator determines at creation time whether the public key credential source is allowed to be backed up. Backup eligibility is signaled in authenticator data’s flags along with the current backup state. Backup eligibility is a credential property and is permanent for a given public key credential source. A backup eligible public key credential source is referred to as a multi-device credential whereas one that is not backup eligible is referred to as a single-device credential. See also § 6.1.3 Credential Backup State.

* https://www.w3.org/TR/webauthn-3/#backup-eligible

helix902• 7 hours ago

Listening to Yubikey and OnePassword talk about this, they actually say "One Person, One Device". Which really speaks to their failure to understand their users.

gortok3• 7 hours ago

I would love to see what you’re referencing, can you provide a link or citation to that quote?

thewebguyd10• 6 hours ago

Because the original FIDO/WebAuthn standard was built for device bound credentials. They imagined unique keypairs tied strictly to a specific piece of hardware. Synced passkeys were a compromise, mostly driven by Apple and Google, because per-device credentials are too much friction for general use. It's not that they failed to understand users, it's that they incorrectly assumed the level of inconvenience people are willing to tolerate to be textbook secure (the answer is almost zero inconvenience).

The device bound model also completely falls apart in the enterprise, fails to address shared devices and shift workers where employees share the same PC under the same OS profile, now you're back to needing good old fashioned SSO w/ physical MFA (Yubikey) to attest who the user is in addition to attesting the device itself.

Before synced passkeys, the actual standard is a unique key pair per device. The key pair on my phone shouldn't be synced to my laptop, my laptop should generate it's own key pair.

astrospective• 6 hours ago

That is odd, I regularly use my Yubikey on multiple devices, that was the biggest draw.

dfabulich11• 7 hours ago

This is much, much simpler than you think it is. Passkeys are just passwords that require a password manager. If you lose your passkey, you'll reset your passkey the same way you reset your password, probably with a "forgot my password" email.

(But you're not going to lose it, because you use a password manager, and the passkey will be stored there and synchronized to all of your other devices.)

The weird part is that password managers provide no way for you to copy and paste your passkeys. To present a passkey, you have to use a password manager. This makes it impossible to copy and paste your passkey to the wrong person (someone trying to trick you).

Major password managers don’t even allow you to export your passkeys to a file that you can read/backup yourself. Instead, the password managers each have their own finicky app-to-app mechanism for transferring passkeys from one password manager to another. (I think all the password managers kinda like that lock in.)

Finally, note that for logging into your password manager itself, you'll always require something outside your password manager to login, probably a password, but possibly a YubiKey; your choice. (It's your one "last password," as they call it.)

https://danfabulich.medium.com/passkeys-are-just-passwords-t...

P.S. It's past time to move off of LastPass. LastPass lost all of your passwords again last month, just like they did in 2022. The most similar service is 1Password. If you like LastPass, you'll like 1Password about the same, but 1Password hasn't had multiple terrible security breaches.

kodt2• 7 hours ago

I looked up the June 2026 breach and there is no mention of passwords being stolen. Only some PII (Phone, name, email, address) through a third party.

TeMPOraL6• 7 hours ago

Major password managers don’t even allow you to export your passkeys to a file that you can read/backup yourself

That's a red flag to me. It's enough that phone backup systems go out of their way to prevent you from accessing your own data, too, for unexplained "sekhurity" reasons.

P.S. It's past time to move off of LastPass. LastPass lost all of your passwords again last month, just like they did in 2022. The most similar service is 1Password. If you like LastPass, you'll like 1Password about the same, but 1Password hasn't had multiple terrible security breaches.

That's the most annoying thing about password managers, and a major reason I still don't use them: there exists no password manager that is cross-platform (desktop/mobile in particular), local-first, and isn't sketchy or enshittified or otherwise on HN's current "don't use it, use <whatever> instead" list.

For core security tool class, that doesn't inspire confidence.

jasode• 6 hours ago

This is much, much simpler than you think it is. Passkeys are just passwords that require a password manager.

The issue isn't what passkeys _are_ (e.g. explaining they are like public/private "ssh keys" and hoping that type of explanation ends the confusion).

Instead, it's the workflow around passkeys. The websites show very confusing dialog popups and choices that a lot of normal people will not understand. This is a good article with screenshots showing the confusion: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/12/passkey-technology-...

I have senior citizens asking me about passkeys because their bank and medical websites keep reminding them about switching to passkeys every time they login into their accounts. My recommendation to them is not to do it unless they have a simplistic single vendor setup such as only Apple iPhone and MacBook with iCloud Passwords app. If instead they have a mixed Windows + Apple setup with 3rd-party password manager, they could accidentally put a new passkey into the os or browser instead of their external password manager and not realize what has happened. This happens because the different parties implementing passkeys all have different agendas that suits their interests and that's what makes the workflow confusing for normal people.

lelandbatey• 6 hours ago

This makes it impossible to copy and paste your passkey to the wrong person (someone trying to trick you).

It also, unfortunately, means it's not possible (via most passkey implementations) to back those passkeys up to paper. Which is quite unfortunate: backing up to paper is one of the most stable and human accessible ways of ensuring redundancy and continuity, an inevitable but also oft-ignored part of credential management.

Security folks would like to pretend "solving continuity" isn't a problem, or is a problem that doesn't need to be accessible.

sandeepkd3• 6 hours ago

I am an engineer and have some insights on the discussions and developments around it.

ITS NOT SIMPLE AT ALL

1. The idea was to provide a phishing resistant authentication method for enterprise users (companies loose quite a lot of money to phishing).

2. Majority of industry players shared the vision of a credential which is available across the platforms and browsers

3. The vision for collaboration never materialized so everyone went their own way to implement it. Examples would be google rolling out browser (Chrome) managed authentication which led to this situation where even on the same machine you have to remember which browser you used to create the Passkey credential.

4. Interestingly enough the earlier popular name was WebAuthn, Apple started calling it Passkey on fly, given Apple's popularity everyone just caved in.

5. My personal interpretation is that in some sense Apple wanted to be the default password manager on Apple devices.

6. This is when all password manager companies jumped in strongly to save their business and the protocol went into a direction where you can use your existing password manager to store the credential/Passkey as well

Personally its a mess, the phishing resistant aspect has its own benefits though. If you are using it with security in mind then my recommendation would be to use a hardware backed security key with NFC enabled. Everything else is pretty much lipstick on pig, they are worse than passwords in some sense from usage perspective.

aetch• 6 hours ago

Having to rely on a possibly proprietary password manager app to use a passkey sounds like a nightmare. A lot could go wrong with the password manager like becoming incompatible, becoming subscription based, lack of updates for bugs, etc. I don’t passkeys for the same reason as the original commenter.

xboxnolifes2• 5 hours ago

So to login using a public PC, you need either USB access (and carry around your password manager) or you need to install the password manager on the PC to log into a website?

dwheeler• 5 hours ago

Wait a sec. My understanding is that passkeys are public/private keypairs. Public is in server, so even breaking into a server does not reveal the private key.

The big risk with passkeys is storing the passkey where it will be held hostage. Don't store it in most single-ecosystem devices like Apple. Bitwarden can export, and I think 1Password can as well.

malfist2• 5 hours ago

This is not much simpler than they think it is.

But you're not going to lose it, because you use a password manager, and the passkey will be stored there and synchronized to all of your other devices

That's just wrong. I use android, my partner uses ios. If he creates the passkey in safari, it's not going to get synced over to my phone. And that's just the first of the family sharing passwords issues. Same person issue is also present if somebody uses an iphone and a windows laptop, or chromebook.

It doesn't help that all modern browsers eagerly try to step in and offer their implementation of passkeys for logins, and they're not featured enough to support the type of shared access or synced access many people would expect from a password manager. How useful is your firefox passwords on an iphone? Or Mac OS's keychain I use as a daily driver on my windows gaming desktop?

Major password managers don’t even allow you to export your passkeys to a file that you can read/backup yourself

This is wrong. Every single major password manager supports export. Lastpass, 1password and bitwarden all do that.

It's past time to move off of LastPass. LastPass lost all of your passwords again last month

That just isn't true. Last month, their third party customer support portal was breached. That did not involve passwords.

__MatrixMan__• 5 hours ago

Instead, the password managers each have their own finicky app-to-app mechanism for transferring passkeys from one password manager to another. (I think all the password managers kinda like that lock in.)

It's a nice simplifying step to talk about password managers here, but in the majority of the cases this won't be handled by a password manager, but rather by the device operating system, and the device manufacturers really like that lock in.

They're also in an especially good position to abuse it, because they now know every service that you authenticate and the webauthn "attestation object" field lets them set up a side channel with those services such that they can sell additional information about you.

Some people will tell you that the attestation object is not used in the consumer passkey system, so there's no way for this abuse to occur, but since it's usually going to be the device manufacturer who controls the password-manager-like component here, and they're the ones who stand to profit most from this kind of abuse, I think we need stronger guarantees than "the spec says you shouldn't do this unless the user is your employee and you paid for their device".

Until they fix this, I'm sticking with my mess of TOTP authenticators and yubikeys.

throwaway-blaze• 5 hours ago

I love that you wrote 6 paragraphs and linked to a medium post all without actually answering the question posed by the comment you replied to.

robertlagrant• 4 hours ago

The weird part is that password managers provide no way for you to copy and paste your passkeys.

The main feature of passkeys is that they can't be pasted into a website they shouldn't be pasted in to. That means you can't copy them, by design.

giantg22• 4 hours ago

This seems like a consolidation of risk to rely on a password manager, especially software defined, especially if it relies on a password. I like the hardware token idea (yubikey). But even that seems cumbersome because you should be making a copy for safe keeping. And how do you securely do password recovery if most security questions can be obtained via osint or the reset links are sent to a site you are similarly locked out of is compromised?

preisschild5• 4 hours ago

This is much, much simpler than you think it is. Passkeys are just passwords that require a password manager.

This is not true. There are device bound passkeys where the private key is stored in a HSM (TPM2.0, Android SE, or apple SE) instead of a hosted service (iCloud, Bitwarden.com). You can just add multiple Passkeys to a single site to have another backup device should your other one be unavailable.

Melatonic5• 2 hours ago

Oldschool KeePass ftw

pibaker3• 1 hour ago

This is much, much simpler than you think it is. Passkeys are just passwords that require a password manager

Cool. So can I write down my passkey on a piece of paper and put it in a safe?

you'll reset your passkey the same way you reset your password, probably with a "forgot my password" email

Cool. But what if I lose the passkey to my email account?

and the passkey will be stored there and synchronized to all of your other devices

Cool. Surely backups and synchronization never fails.

The weird part is that password managers provide no way for you to copy and paste your passkeys

Uh oh. So you are saying passkeys are not like passwords? Last time I checked, every password manager lets me copy and paste my passwords just in case.

To present a passkey, you have to use a password manager

Uh oh. So you are saying passkeys are not like passwords, like at all? Last time I checked, I can just type in my password using a keyboard on all websites I visit.

This makes it impossible to copy and paste your passkey to the wrong person

Uh oh. So it means I can't just give my password to a family member sitting in the opposite side of the room? Sorry mom, corporate has decided that you are trying to trick me.

Major password managers don’t even allow you to export your passkeys to a file that you can read/backup yourself

Uh oh. So is there a registry of Major League Password Managers that are guaranteed to implement Corporate Strength Cybersecurity Measurements? Will I be blocked by services if I happen to have landed on a minor password manager?

gblargg2• 40 minutes ago

This is much, much simpler than you think it is. Passkeys are just passwords that require a password manager. If you lose your passkey, you'll reset your passkey the same way you reset your password, probably with a "forgot my password" email.

This is why I don't bother with these if they have a weaker workaround, which will be open to remote hacking.

pseudalopex4• 31 minutes ago

Passkeys are just passwords that require a password manager.

Passkeys are passwords which allow a relying party to control what password manager you can use.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46305566

1-more2• 7 hours ago

If I accidentally set up a passkey on my phone (let’s say I use Safari one day instead of my go-to, Brave), can I still log in without that passkey on other devices?

N=1 and I'm sure I'm holding it wrong, but I can only log in to ADP to request PTO from my personal laptop because I set up an iCloud passkey, work laptop does not allow access to iCloud keychain, and you can't request PTO from mobile.

nozzlegear7• 5 hours ago

Although that's more a failure of your workplace's security policy than of the Passkey itself. It makes sense that the passkey doesn't work if you can't access the place the passkey is stored.

throwawayffffas4• 7 hours ago

I think the intended workflow is you login with your phone and that device is now the authority that allows other devices to issue their own passkeys.

In my opinion it's a bad plan, because it elevates certain devices to privileged status, if you lose your phone you are hosed.

Passkeys should be allowed to be synced between devices and stored on password managers in the cloud. I am making my own password manager for my personal use, but have not delved into passkeys.

qlte• 4 hours ago

  > Passkeys should be allowed to be synced between devices and stored on password managers in the cloud. I am making my own password manager for my personal use, but have not delved into passkeys.

They are, that’s exactly how I use all my passkeys with Bitwarden. They sync to any device I have Bitwarden installed on when added on one device.

teekert• 7 hours ago

I use ProtonPass and afaiu it just syncs the passkeys private part everywhere you need it. So it “just works”. This is better than just old fashioned credentials because the passkey only “triggers” on the correct domain, so they can’t be phished by other domains… Right?

rufo• 6 hours ago

I recognize the point of your post is more about the lack of clarity and details around passkeys. That's real, and I don't really have an answer for that - other than, I think maybe the quest for making them simple and "just work" has maybe made them nebulous enough that we've wound up in the current situation where a lot of even technically savvy people don't really understand them. But I feel like answering your questions might sort of help explain why that's the case, so I'm going to take a stab at it:

If I accidentally set up a passkey on my phone (let’s say I use Safari one day instead of my go-to, Brave), can I still log in without that passkey on other devices?

Assuming you have LastPass set up to be an iOS password manager, and it fully supports iOS' passkey implementation: when you create a passkey in Safari, it will ask you if you want to store it in LastPass or in the iOS Passwords app (previously known as iCloud Keychain). If you say LastPass, then it's up to them, but I assume it'll sync to all your devices - it's how 1Password works. If you were to accidentally say Apple Passwords, it'll sync to all your Apple devices automatically, and you can either use Apple's password browser extension on Windows, or you can use the "another device flow" I'm about to detail.

Is there a way to ensure that passkey can be used on other devices?

As mentioned above, passkeys are intended to sync via your password manager of choice as the primary use case. If for any reason you don't have that passkey synced to that device, _and that passkey is on a mobile device with a camera_, most browsers will give you the option to scan a QR code with your phone. This kicks off a flow that will authenticate you via your phone's biometrics or passkey, then use Bluetooth to first ensure device proximity and then handle the authentication exchange. In the case of iOS, this includes any passkey-supporting password manager, so the passkey itself can be in 1Password; it doesn't have to be in the iOS password system for this to work.

When I first read the above, my hackles were raised given how well Bluetooth operates at times; but every time I've used it so far, it's been fast and flawless. Still, I can see a lot of scenarios where this might not work - e.g., the first one I thought of was a public computer at a library where Bluetooth might be locked down; corporate computers or remote servers could also be troublesome. As far as I know, passkeys don't yet have answers to those scenarios; other than to just use your password + 2FA as you would without a passkey.

As far as I know, both of the above apply to every passkey-consuming site.

Can I add another passkey on another device? How many passkeys can I set up for a particular site/app?

This touches on your last paragraph, where it indeed could change based on the website. In my experience, every website where passkeys are fully supported - e.g., not ones that are using passkeys as a substitute for FIDO/U2F keys - has let me add multiple passkeys and have not _appeared_ to have a limit. I typically will create a passkey in both 1Password and Apple Passwords just to have a backup, and I can't recall any cases where that's been a problem. Still, I can't say for sure that isn't a problem on any website.

I went all in on trying passkeys when they started to be an option, and I don't have any notable regrets. For me, passkeys have generally worked well when the site is designed to use them well; and at no point have they been a _major_ hindrance. That isn't to say there are _no_ annoyances, though:

- Most websites that support passkeys tend to use them as a replacement for both the password _and_ 2FA, which makes them more convenient. However, a few - Amazon being the most notable I can recall - only use them as a second factor, which just makes them feel a little useless.

- A passkey can _also_ be used as the proof of identity, meaning you can log in in one fell swoop and don't need to enter a username or email address, which is IMO the best showcase for passkeys. Like above, this makes websites that ask you to enter an email address before letting you use a passkey also feel annoying.

- Most web browsers I've used support the QR + Bluetooth flow I mentioned above (otherwise known as Hybrid Transport or caBLE) without issue; Linux has been the odd duck out. Firefox doesn't seem to support it at all on Linux, and Chrome-based browsers do but sometimes are missing what they need and in that case don't show it as an option. Since I sync just about every passkey with 1Password this typically isn't a problem; the exception is the passkey for Apple Accounts, which Apple creates automatically, and (AFAIK) doesn't allow you to enroll your own. Apple Accounts are the only service I've found that does this, though.

- Some websites seem to only offer passkeys as an option if you're on a mobile device, or at least did so at the time of enrolling. eBay and PayPal I think are the two that jump out at me as having done this. Why they did it this way instead of simply detecting if the browser supported passkeys, I have no idea.

All of the above issues have gone down over time, so it's generally been a net decrease in friction over time. And, at least as far as I can recall, passwords themselves continue to be an option in every instance I've enrolled a passkey. So if you like your passwords, generally speaking, you can keep them :P

thewebguyd10• 6 hours ago

passkeys are intended to sync via your password manager of choice as the primary use case.

The sync was actually a compromise to the standard. The idea was unique, device-bound credentials. One person, one device. The private key/passkey on your phone should not be the same one on your laptop, or your tablet, etc. Each device was supposed to have it' own unique credential.

Allowing sync is a security downgrade to the standard, in terms of threat-model guarantees. Pure WebAuthn credentials should be sealed in hardware (TPM or Secure Enclave or equivalent) and be mathematically non-exportable which guarantees zero remote blast radius, an attacker must physically posses the device.

Allowing sync and storing passkeys in a password manager reintroduces cloud account compromise risk and recovery flow hijacks. You lose non-repudiation.

Still more secure than passphrase + TOTP, but doesn't eliminate account takeover attacks against your cloud credential vault, which purely hardware based, per-device credentials do.

NetMageSCW7• 4 hours ago

Still, I can see a lot of scenarios where this might not work - e.g., the first one I thought of was a public computer at a library where Bluetooth might be locked down; corporate computers or remote servers could also be troublesome.

None of my desktop computers support Bluetooth. Neither do my wife’s.

3RTB297• 6 hours ago

My issue is that they're touted to the consumer as secure, and they're not really doing much more than a complex password.

How do you generate a new key if you need one? Same process as a password reset. Does it prevent session stealers? Not at all.

Its "benefit" is grandma can't read it to an attacker. OK, well can grandma click a link and have a session stealer bork her life instead? Yeah, and attackers know that and just shift methods. Session stealing isn't a sophisticated attack, and so all that's being done is shaving a cost on PW resets in the interest of shareholder value, at the cost of security theater and locking up your keys in a single domain that holds control over our access to everything.

zdp73• 5 hours ago

There is security value. A passkey will not work anywhere except the actual website. Fake look a like sites can't get the credentials. Evidently they can trick you into authorizing their device.

pkulak2• 6 hours ago

I think the point is that Passkeys are not supposed to be as precious as passwords. You're supposed to have a brand new one for every device/application combination. So they are just login cookies at this point, and haven't even come close to replacing passwords because you need to know your password to get a new passkey every time you log in.

Now, is that the official stance? I don't know; but it's _absolutely_ what every current implementation suggests the companies deploying this stuff want.

You can make passkeys better. Like me, you can install a well-funded password manager (well-funded, because it needs the engineering effort behind it to keep up with the ever-changing passkey apis on every platform in the world; screw up and oos, can't log in today!). Then you have one passkey per remote service, and just have to make sure 1password is _always_ installed and perfectly integrated. Easy!

MattTheRealOne2• 6 hours ago

There are a couple of problems I have with that. 1) Many websites limit the number of passkeys I can link to my account. Some only allow 2 or 3. I have more devices than that. 2) If I am supposed to create a new passkey for every device, how do I login in the first place? Most websites currently fallback to password login which defeats the security benefit of using passkeys in the first place.

I currently only use passkeys for a few websites that have awkward password login workflows or do not autofill properly from my password manager. I just have a single passkey for each that is synced via Bitwarden. Currently, I see passkeys as using an electronic biometric lock on the front door while passwords are still regular locks on the backdoor. The biometric lock on the front door does not do much for security when the backdoor still exists and I have come across very few websites that support only allowing passkeys. And those that do still run into problem 2 listed above.

skybrian• 6 hours ago

Copying / syncing passkeys between password managers is still work in progress, but you can usually work around it by making multiple keys. For important websites, I recommend saving additional passkeys to Keychain, etc, as backup, assuming the website allows that. (It should, but some websites might not have a good implementation.)

Also, nothing says you have to delete passwords (or alternate means of logging in) if you already have them set up. Having multiple ways in will help prevent lockout.

zdp73• 4 hours ago

Unfortunately probably implementation specific, but you don't always need to have multiple passkeys. There is cross device passkey login. I had this occur in the last couple weeks. Evidently I had created a passkey on my phone. Logging into that site on my PC, it identified that I had a passkey and allowed me to authenticate using my phone.

hoppp2• 5 hours ago

You can add as many passkeys as you want and you can still have password logins too.

MattTheRealOne2• 4 hours ago

I have come across many websites that limit how many passkeys I can add. Some have only allowed one or two.

mdavidn• 5 hours ago

I can't speak to all of your browser combinations, but most desktop browsers can present a QR code when logging in with a passkey. I keep my passkeys in a password manager synced between my phone and personal computers. On my work computer, where the password manager is not installed, I can still use passkeys by scanning the QR code with my iPhone's camera app.

shinryuu• 5 hours ago

(small parenthesis, please consider to _not_ use lastpass given they have had so many security incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LastPass#Security_incidents )

pjsg• 5 hours ago

For me, it is "how many passkeys can I have for the same site?", and "how do I revoke them?"

Worse, I'm still using LastPass -- but migrating over to Chrome password storage as it syncs between phone and laptop. LastPass doesn't give you the option to not use it for passkeys. It might be the thing that causes me to finish the migration away from it.

thecombjelly• 5 hours ago

A potentially good idea got corrupted by vendors, password managers, browsers, etc trying to assert control. I'm also an engineer and I find the UI around passkeys entirely unclear, but it doesn't have to be that way. It seems like everyone wants to be _the_ password manager for all your passkeys. They don't want to make it easy to understand that is what they are doing though, they just happily offer to "handle it for you".

My non-technical friends are extremely confused by passkeys and if they should use them and how to use them and I honestly don't have very good answers. It is a mess. I don't believe an inherit mess, but one created by the companies and projects trying to take advantage of the new system.

thewebguyd10• 4 hours ago

It seems like everyone wants to be _the_ password manager for all your passkeys.

Which defeats part of the point of passkeys in the first place in that they are supposed to be device-bound, the private key held in the TPM or secure enclave or whatever other security chip, mathematically non-exportable. Storing all your private keys in a cloud vault still leaves you exposed to potential credential theft if your vault gets compromised.

Every device is supposed to have its own unique private key, stored in TPM, released only when passing the user challenge (biometrics or pin, or a yubikey).

readread3• 5 hours ago

I’ve just been operating under the assumption passkeys are gonna lock me out unrecoverably in some way at some point, and have been avoiding them for anything important while allowing them for low-value accounts so they’ll stop nagging me.

I hate that I can’t just put a value in a plain text file somewhere (encrypted, let’s say, to preempt the inevitable and low-value response) and rely on that to work when I need it on any device and interface that can accept keyboard input.

deltoidmaximus4• 4 hours ago

I avoid using them altogether for the same reason. I won't use them for low value accounts because it signals that I think they might be acceptable to eventually require for high value ones. And of course low value accounts have no value so I don't even care about phishing on most of those.

selicos4• 5 hours ago

It makes sense for a work device that is off network/domain, but then it is your primary/only means of interfacing with services. Then you can consolidate under a Windows Hello passkey or something else.

The second you have a second device to log in from they are useless. The second you want or need to share a credential (smart or not) they are more work than a password.

The passkey trend seems lead by platforms that want to make it easier to get or stay logged in, Netflix type companies that want to prevent account sharing, and those that value convenience (if one device) over security.

bombcar2• 5 hours ago

I’m 90% certain most of the push for passkeys is to prevent paid account sharing.

rpdillon• 5 hours ago

Totally in the same boat, passkeys seem to massively increase the risk that I will lose access to my data.

OkayPhysicist3• 3 hours ago

I've taken up the strategy of telling any less-technical person who asks me about passkeys that they are the mark of the beast, intrinsically evil, and should be avoided at all costs, and I encourage all y'all to do the same.

Maybe, at some distant point in the past, there was a plan for a whole system of intercommunicating implementations of passkeys. That is no longer the case. The moment that they decided to include the information necessary to only allow the use of certain passkey vaults in the protocol, and then use that capability to threaten to lock out certain vaults that dared to let users actually be in control of THEIR OWN DAMN CREDENTIALS, it invalidated the entire project in my eyes. Passkeys cannot be trusted, they are designed to let entrenched powers hold your authentication hostage, and should under no circumstances be allowed to take root in the computing ecosystem.

seemaze• 4 hours ago

I use bitwarden[0]. It covers all cases and devices in question.

As a bonus, I self host using the open source vaultwarden[1] server implementation, which is packaged in alpine linux.

[0] https://bitwarden.com/ [1] https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

giantg22• 4 hours ago

The thing I find burdensome is managing all the keys in a secure way. I think I would want a hardware token to store the keys on, have separate keys for every site, need to back up my keys onto a second token in case the first one is lost, etc. It gets burdensome. At least with passwords you can store them in various ways that are not hardware or software dependent.

Macha2• 4 hours ago

In practice, because site owners know users are going to mess up having their passkeys on all devices, I've not seen any insist that a passkey _must_ be used, and you can always log in with your password (or worst case, email magic links) as a fallback.

However, this negates the primary stated objective of passkeys, removing the possibility of users being phished, so I'm not sure how long that will remain the case everywhere.

I've also encountered sites that have a login with passkey prompt that then turns around and asks for TOTP 2FA or email confirmation anyway, which to me seems to negate the primary customer benefit of passkeys...

jolmg4• 4 hours ago

I've not seen any insist that a passkey _must_ be used, and you can always log in with your password (or worst case, email magic links) as a fallback.

With the exception of Github, and banks.

ilchalpenl2• 4 hours ago

Edit: One final consideration, my spouse and I share user/name passwords for some things (notably Pandora and our Amazon Prime account) since they don’t handle things like family logins well; how do both my wife and I use amazon or Pandora with passkeys? Do we each set up passkeys? How do I get her Pass if that’s not an option?

Lets say it is a android phone. Open amazon app. login in the usual user/password + 2FA (like with QRcode or phone). create passkey. done. This passkey would have been now synced to your google account.

Take next spouse phone. Open amazon website or app. try login it will try for passkey but cannot find it. so

- login in the usual user/password + 2FA (like with QRcode or phone). create passkey. done - Now this passkey would have synced to spouse google account.

In future, assuming you have apple or windows laptop. assume you have signed into Google (chrome). Now go to amazon. It will ask - shall I sign in with passkey. Yes, give your macos fingerprint or windows hello or password of that laptop. login Done magically. You dont even need to remember username or password.

Assuming you both have iPhones. You can sync the passkey to icloud account. And for every new iDevice it will be available.

The main bottleneck of passkey would be that all 3rd party sites will have another non-passkey way as backup to login. I have never seen a website that would say - remove all other methods and keep only passkey.

In a way passkey is 99% convenience. If a hacker would some how get your sms and password they can by-pass.

gortok3• 3 hours ago

Thanks. One glaring issue I see is that right now police can’t ask you for your password in the USA (a violation of the right against self-incrimination). They can however get a search warrant for your device and your biometrics, and wouldn’t need your password if they can gain access through your pass key.

radial_symmetry• 4 hours ago

oh good I thought it was just me who didn't understand them

PaulHoule• 3 hours ago

I find it abjectly terrifying. Like if I log into your site with a Passkey what happens if my device breaks? What if some big tech company decides to nuke my account for no good reason?

Saris• 3 hours ago

If I accidentally set up a passkey on my phone (let’s say I use Safari one day instead of my go-to, Brave), can I still log in without that passkey on other devices?

Yes, but you can also add the passkey to your password manager so it's available on all your devices.

Can I add another passkey on another device?

Yes.

How many passkeys can I set up for a particular site/app?

I haven't really seen a specified limit on any sites, but also if you're using a password manager it's only 1 passkey for all your devices anyways.

For now, I’m going to stick with LastPass and use Passwords; because no matter whether I lose my device or not or whether I’m on my own devices or not, I can be sure I’ll be able to get into a site/app.

Your passkeys would be in LastPass as well like your passwords, so arguably the same result regardless of which you use.

Edit: One final consideration, my spouse and I share user/name passwords for some things (notably Pandora and our Amazon Prime account) since they don’t handle things like family logins well; how do both my wife and I use amazon or Pandora with passkeys? Do we each set up passkeys? How do I get her Pass if that’s not an option?

If it was me I'd add a second passkey to my password manager for your wife under a new entry, and share that entry to her lastpass account.

Or if she's not on lastpass, you could just copy the data from the passkey over to whatever she does use.

halJordan4• 3 hours ago

I get your problem, i don't really accept it as valid. Passkeys were always supposed to be fungible. You have one in your iPhone, a different one on your desktop. A third in your significant other's phone. All stored in the hardware tpm equivalent.

You can have 7 passkeys. You can have 14.

The real failure of passkeys (emphasis on the s!) is that people think they must only have one.

tsimionescu• 3 hours ago

Again, is this true for all major sites that support passkeys? And how do you set it up? My passwords are automatically synced between my devices, how to I achieve the same thing if I set up an account with a passkey?

chrisandchris• 3 hours ago

[...] people think they must only have one.

That's the real failure? I think the real failure is that people must have _more than one_. I thought so hard to add all my credentials to 1Password. Now people tell me I should use a Yubikey (or better two or three of them). What do you think, I'm going to register a couple of hundred accounts times three for something I already have (my password manager)?

The real advante in passkeys is in allowing me to log in into a service on a foreign device without typing [my password], which is (honestly) something now sane person should ever do.

raron2• 2 hours ago

I don't think that would work either.

Let's say I have a new account and a single Passkey in the TPM of PC1. I want to log in from PC2, too. How can I do that? (I know there is some trickery with Bluetooth, but I haven't seen anything supporting it, and desktop PCs usually doesn't have Bluetooth connectivity.)

AFAIK some browsers can do some magic to use a Passkey from your smartphone on a PC, but you need to log in to the same browser-sync account from both device (which brings back us to the same issue).

Also the whole thing becomes a mess when you change devices. You need to log into all the services you have ever used to delete the Passkeys from devices you no longer have, and you need to add a new passkey from a new device you bought to all the services you use.

NautilusWave• 2 hours ago

I save all my passkeys in Bitwarden and they sync across devices.

SoftTalker3• 2 hours ago

Same. I'm a tech professional, and I don't set up passkeys for similar reasons. I log in to online services from a lot of different devices and browsers. I use a password manager but the keys to the kingdom (my email password) exists only in my head.

jmalicki• 2 hours ago

I don't know the exact tech behind it, but for a phone passkey I get a QR code on my laptop screen to scan with my phone, I accept it, and it logs me in.

sharts• 2 hours ago

Not sure about lastpass, but you can save passkeys to 1password. Works just fine.

clickety_clack• 2 hours ago

Notwithstanding the danger of having everything on a single platform, the Apple passkey works great. Sign into one and you’re signed in everywhere and you can share passwords with others.

OptionOfT• 48 minutes ago

Wife and I use bitwarden. For shared accounts we put them in a shared folder, and the passkey is attached in there, in bitwarden, meaning it survives device resets.

beAbU• 34 minutes ago

I store my passkeys in Bitwarden. Can you not do the same in LastPass?

tecoholic• 17 minutes ago

and I use LastPass

Oh! No. Please switch to something else. Last pass has had so many breaches, at this point it’s just not worth it.

exabrial• 7 hours ago

With physical U2F key, I could explain to my 78 year-old-parents "this is a physical key needed to access your account. Think of it like the front door key to your house. Don't lose it or lend it to anyone. We should have a couple of backup keys too." And they got completely understood and added it to all of their accounts. This was not hard. People assumed consumers were too stupid to do this without even giving them a chance.

JohnFen5• 7 hours ago

Don't lose it or lend it to anyone. We should have a couple of backup keys too.

Honestly, this is one of the two things that make me hate passkeys. The key management is a high-friction pain in the ass.

xur172• 6 hours ago

I never found a comfortable way to ensure all of my accounts had more than one U2F key associated with them. I always wished there was a way to have 2 physical U2F keys, one on me, and by adding one to an account, both would work.

As is, I had to either:

- Keep both on me, and add both - I am at risk of losing both at the same time

- Keep one one me, one in a safe - I have to keep track of which device I've added to which service, and periodically take the backup one out of the safe and iterate through the "new" services

I was never satisfied with either approach, so I ended up with an OTP app with backups.

epistasis5• 2 hours ago

If you're comfortable with OTP with backups, does a password manager like 1password, with backups, fit your needs? Or would you prefer to self-manage your backups on your own storage?

I ask because I'm curious about others' practices and desires here, not with any promise of a better solution!

TeMPOraL6• 6 hours ago

And/or maybe the vendors were annoyed that people would lend the keys anyway, refusing to accept that it is normal because that's how delegation of authority works in real life too. House keys are also things you often lend to a third party that you want/need to access your house in your absence, and in fact making extra duplicated for trusted third parties is normal.

Software vendors continue to refuse to support, or even accept the existence of, this entire class of use cases for regular consumers (they are, however, more than happy to milk enterprises on convoluted implementations of those).

kotaKat• 6 hours ago

I still can't even get a physical key anywhere in person. You can certainly get phones just about anywhere, but you can't get any FIDO keys at brick and mortar, last I checked.

Until I can tell Grandma to "go down to Walmart and ask the man at the electronics counter for a Yubikey", we still have a few issues.

(No. Ordering online is *not* a valid option in this scenario. If I want to order a Yubikey to this address at this exact moment in time and space, Amazon won't deliver one to me for at least six days at the earliest, based on their rural delivery estimate. Replacing a key is basically impossible.)

simoncion• 47 minutes ago

Amazon won't deliver one to me for at least six days at the earliest, based on their rural delivery estimate.

That sounds like an Amazon problem. For 40 USD, yubico.com says that it will deliver a shipment on the next business day to this rather rural house I see in the middle of Foothills Road in Newman Lake, Washington.

Also:

Replacing a key is basically impossible.

If you know that getting next-day delivery is dreadfully difficult, then order a handful to have as spares. "If you can reasonably afford it, always buy more than one." is solid advice for just about every important thing that you are likely to break or lose.

xboxnolifes2• 5 hours ago

Sure, but i would never want a physical key to something important. Physical keys get lost, so the front door spare is under the flower pot.

And now I have another thing I need to carry everywhere.

programmertote• 7 hours ago

Like some folks already commented here, even as someone who has been working in tech for 20+ years, I find Passkey confusing. I understand the key aspect in computer science term, but I don't know how to use it across devices. Another big worry is that if I tie that to a physical key, then I might lose it (because it's physical) and never get it back.

reddalo2• 7 hours ago

Exactly, I always refuse to add a passkey because I'm afraid I won't be able to easily login again. Also, I don't want to be locked in to a vendor.

rib3ye• 6 hours ago

You can use a passkey that's tied to a Yubikey.

pas6• 4 hours ago

use an open source password manager that supports them.

as others mentioned, there's BitWarden (cross-platform, self-hostable), but if you want something simple there's KeePassXC (and you can put the store file on a dropbox shared folder)

preisschild5• 4 hours ago

You can register multiple passkeys for a single user, there is no lock in

mixdup• 4 hours ago

a big problem with passkeys is that there is a lot of flexibility in how it is rolled out with a given site or app. Some sites ask your browser for a passkey as soon as you hit the login page. Some sites you need to enter your username/email address first before you're prompted. Some sites a passkey satisfies both password + second factor. Some sites you need to enter your password and the passkey is the second factor. Some sites you don't need a password but do need the passkey + a second factor (usually SMS)

This is on top of the confusion around enrolling passkeys in your device and synchronizing them

I am a big passkeys fan, and use them on every service I can, but they leave a lot to be desired in terms of user experience. Not sure all of them are solvable, either. The platform vendor side can be fixed: vendors can better integrate with each other to make your passkeys available on every device. But, the issues with how they work across sites and applications is probably not solvable

aPoCoMiLogin3• 52 minutes ago

i don't think you really understand how it works. most implementations are secondary implementation alongside login+password.

how to use cross-device? either use some password manager that supports it (apple/google/1password/keepass/etc support it), or use device that you have on hand most of the time - phone. when the passkey pops up - point your camera and scan the qrcode - you are done. otherwise use dedicated device like yubikey or similar.

really not sure what is hard about that to understand. i'm using android and chrome, so i can use the password manager in chrome, or my phone to scann the qrcode.

my country is using similar authorization for government "profile" (mobywatel - poland) that has similar to passkey implementation. you download the app on your phone, login via login+password (or other), download the certificates, and from now on you can point your camera on qrcodes to login to government websites; it requires pin/code or biometric confirmation on the phone - same as passkeys.

varispeed2• 7 hours ago

I find it difficult to explain how to use password manager to non-IT person. Whatever I say, they say it is not secure. No amount of explanation will change their mind. They prefer to keep their passwords in their physical note book hidden in the safe (yes, they open the safe etc each time they need to log in somewhere when they get logged out).

As someone with ADHD a passkey is something I can lose easily and I don't want my accounts to be tied to any specific device. What if I have to upgrade my laptop tomorrow because one I use got bricked? Sounds like an absolute nightmare.

Password on the other hand I can remember for dozens of services, each very long.

jerf• 7 hours ago

If the person you describe really is doing that for all their passwords, then they are correct. Their password store is more secure than a password manager by nearly every metric that counts.

The one thing I would ding that approach on is recoverability, though. If a fire burns that down, it's gone.

cpburns200912• 7 hours ago

I mean, they're right. I wouldn't trust any online password manager even if it was iCloud.

vinay_ys• 5 hours ago

They should buy a Yubikey (a physical key) and keep their passkeys resident on that. Then they can truly keep that physical key locked up in their safe. And it is truly safer than their physical notebook because they are safe from being tricked into entering their password in the wrong place.

NetMageSCW7• 4 hours ago

How do they tell their significant other how to logon to a shared account when they aren’t together? How do they use the Yubikey with their phone, laptop and tablet conveniently?

ElijahLynn• 7 hours ago

I only use pass keys by storing them in 1password. Then I don't have to worry about the whole "lose/broke/replace a device" thing, which is inevitable. Then just be really good about keeping your backup codes etc with 1pass solid.

mullingitover• 7 hours ago

You’d think a head of product at a tech company would embrace a “it’s literally impossible to have your password stolen if you use this” technology.

Tarq0n2• 7 hours ago

You can still get your session cookies stolen. If you have good password hygiene passkeys only protect you in extremely niche scenarios.

kbar13• 4 hours ago

if you have good password hygiene is doing a lot of work here. such a large population of the world does not have this, credential stuffing is a huge class of vuln

rsyring• 7 hours ago

FWIW: I find passkeys to be a very simple and easy to use concept.

Simple: it's like a password that I don't have to type in

Easy to use: because I use 1Password and just have it installed on everything. On Android, it can be set as the default passkey provider so, even on mobile, I am using passkeys shared across devices.

Is this "less secure" because I'm sharing the keys through 1Password. I suppose, at some level. But before that, I was simply sharing passwords through 1Password in the exact same way. So, I don't think my security posture has changed any.

What has changed is the UX and IMO for the better. Now I don't have to generate/fill/copy-paste text strings for user names or passwords. 1Password knows what site I'm on and usually responds automatically when I'm in a passkey context. If I have more than one passkey available, because I have multiple accounts (for something like Google Workspace), it shows me options and I pick the one I want.

Honestly, it's mostly a "just works" system and I like it a lot better than passwords.

YMMV, of course.

Tarq0n2• 7 hours ago

OK now say you're on a work/library/friend's computer and you want to look up an account in 1password on your phone so you can type in the password. Passkeys don't support this very basic and common workflow. Meanwhile there's no real security benefit over password manager generated complex and not reused passwords.

vel0city7• 6 hours ago

If I'm on someone else's computer and I want to use a passkey on my phone, the computer will display a QR code. I scan the QR code with my phone, the phone signs the login request and posts it to the service's callback. Then I'm logged in on that new device.

If my phone's camera is broken but both devices have bluetooth, it can do the handshake over bluetooth.

If I'm on someone else's computer and I want to use a passkey on my authenticator on my keychain, I'll just plug it in and then tap the button on the authenticator.

Meanwhile, if I logged in with the password and the account only has a password then they have a full copy of my entire authenticator to the account. With the passkey, once the session is invalidated the access is gone.

voxic113• 4 hours ago

I use a passkey with discord on my phone. If I want to log in to discord on a computer it shows a QR code on the page/desktop app and I scan it with my phone to log in. I could see this become a pretty common pattern.

I like it because I can use discord on even a pretty untrusted computer without providing it any credentials or access to my passkey, and then later when I'm done I can revoke the session.

iamnothere4• 3 hours ago

This is why you should use physical tokens like Yubikey.

But don’t log in to important accounts on a public computer, like ever, unless it’s a dire emergency.

nlawalker• 7 hours ago

My problem with passkeys is that "don't have to" is actually "don't have to, and couldn't if I wanted to".

RHSeeger3• 7 hours ago

Everything you said is _also_ true if you use a password manager than can interact with the browser (which you're already doing).

Plus, that doesn't have the negatives/limitations of passkeys.

vel0city7• 6 hours ago

But you still have all the negatives/limitations of passwords, of which there are tons.

cpburns200912• 6 hours ago

This is a big problem I have with "just works". Everyone is used to services only allowing a single password. I know the answer to this, but it's not clear in the marketing or how it's explained to normie end-users: Won't creating a passkey erase my password? How do you sign in on another device? Won't that change the passkey and lock me out from the first device?

SpaceManNabs• 5 hours ago

it just a lot of complexity and i don't want to deal with it but i have to because of all these dark patterns. sometimes i enable pass key and don't even notice.

AndroTux• 5 hours ago

This. Honestly, most of the arguments I read against passkeys just sound like “old man yells at cloud.”

It’s not that difficult. Spend 10 minutes researching the topic and you’re fine. Passkeys are so much more convenient than having to use passwords. When implemented right, it’s literally one click from opening the login page to being signed in. On all of my devices.

dluxem• 4 hours ago

I try to use passkeys when possible as I'm also a 1Password user, but this hardly "just works". Firefox on Windows often triggers the Windows password manager for passkeys (some how this is only on some sites), making it impossible to use 1Password.

I've seen the same on Android too, and I think there's a difference in how Chrome and Firefox are handling the requests.

Then you get in to cases like a Microsoft Account. You need to use your account to log in to the device that has the passkeys, so the workflow never works properly and you have to fall back to another method.

Amazon is another one. If an app like Libby redirects to Amazon, I get a different, passkey-less password prompt, so I need to have a password readily available.

It's great when it works, but honestly 1password with straight up username/passwords is probably just a better UX in the end.

usernametaken292• 7 hours ago

I don’t understand this point at all. I think the author has himself confused with the average consumer. For the first time in a decade or so you can buy a PHYSICAL key and use it to sign into websites. I can explain this to any grandma out there. Likewise, I’m an Apple user. Once you’re in Apple universe passkeys are extremely easy. Tap your thumb on the scanner, done. Now we can put on the tinfoil hat and say how this fosters vendor lock in yadda yadda but the last thing I would say is that it has terrible user ergonomics. LOL

RHSeeger3• 6 hours ago

Once you’re in Apple universe

And there's your blocker. Being limited to only devices from a single vendor is horrible, and a firm no from a lot of people.

Now we can put on the tinfoil hat and say how this fosters vendor lock

The fact that you call it a tinfoil hat type issue is just insane to me. Literally every person in my household has some apple devices and some other ones (android, windows, etc). And some of them have switched back and forth.

Plus, the "ergonomics" of logging into a website on a random device to check something are awful.

usernametaken292• 6 hours ago

I literally presented you with the solution in the sentence before. Buy a usb c dongle key. You pay 20 euros to NEVER have to remember a single password ever again. Seems like an ok trade off to me. Likewise you can register multiple passkeys for multiple devices, so long as you do it in sequence (first Apple, then Android) etc. Really it takes very little getting used to. Ever tried to fill out a crap password form which wants 7 special characters but no dashes but uppercase but not uppercase Y and so forth.

cube003• 3 hours ago

Being limited to only devices from a single vendor is horrible, and a firm no from a lot of people.

Maybe for a lot of tech people, I don't think the general public understands the risks enough to care.

NicuCalcea2• 6 hours ago

Maybe it is easy to explain, but passkey promoters have clearly failed to do it. I don't think a single person I know in real life uses one.

jotaen• 5 hours ago

For the first time in a decade or so you can buy a PHYSICAL key and use it to sign into websites. I can explain this to any grandma out there.

What would you answer if grandma asked you what happens if she loses her physical key?

schmichael• 7 hours ago

I mostly love passkeys to be honest even though I use multiple browsers across multiple devices and OSes (iOS, Chromebook, Linux, macOS, Xbox, etc). Bitwarden’s support is (finally) pretty good.

My problem is that I manage a lot of accounts for my family which makes passkeys a nightmare. If I’m out and a kid gets chucked into a login flow that happens to require a passkey, I can’t text a password and TOTP code to the adult with them. I know that’s terrible opsec but the reality is people share accounts and passkeys are designed to thwart that.

ranger2072• 7 hours ago

The website for my HSA required me to set up a passkey last time I logged in. I set it up on my work laptop and my work password manager, which means I can now no longer access my account from my personal computer. This is fantastic, just what I wanted

cpburns200912• 6 hours ago

This is exactly a scenario that worries me. Proponents of passkeys imply you can setup a bunch of passkeys. Evidently that's not always the case.

AlexandrB5• 4 hours ago

"But that's just a bad implementation, many other sites do it right!"

And many sites block paste from password managers. Passkeys have so many ways to do them wrong that we're going to see all kinds of new and exciting failure modes that lock you out of your account in the future.

rdsubhas• 6 hours ago

I think the irony here is missed.

nitwit005• 5 hours ago

And then you call them up, and they allow you in after asking some identity questions, and you learn there's no real security.

sphars• 4 hours ago

Are you also using HealthEquity for your HSA? I'm the same boat, they're forcing passkeys on me. I can still login using my employer's SSO but I've been putting off setting up the passkey until I have to.

ranger2072• 3 hours ago

yep

jeroenhd4• 50 minutes ago

Click the "lost password" button. Passkeys aren't magic, they're just a funky password.

If the website didn't implement a "lost password" button then that says a lot more about the website than it says about passkeys.

herf• 6 hours ago

I think portability is very confusing: they rolled out passkeys with no device portability (device-bound) and only recently added it (CXP). So for anyone with multiple devices it was a relative disaster - why should my Windows PC hold a device-bound passkey to anything? How do I login on Linux or macOS? Picking a password manager to do portability also means another kind of lockin, though maybe you can live with that kind if you really trust the company. Even so, the password managers all seem to be competing to have relaxed security, so that vault and account passwords are the same, or you are asked to type your master password into a webpage - surely we didn't replace per-site passwords with this?

mnls• 6 hours ago

I’ve read all the answers. I still don’t get it. I find it WAY more complicated than copy/paste or a browser extension that does that for me.

I hope it won’t become mandatory. (I honestly doubt).

yegle• 6 hours ago

I don't know how to rationalize it: is passkey so good that even the banking apps start pushing it, or is it all a big conspiracy theory with a hidden agenda?

junaru2• 6 hours ago

Passkeys were invented so hacked sites could brush off their leaks with "no credentials were leaked" and minimise any regulatory fines. This is the reason why its being pushed by the big players.

Additionally this puts the same players in control of your logins - want to sync your passkeys? - enable "iCloud Keychain", or some other 'trust me bro' app that will 'securely store/sync your data' - no thank you.

In perfect world users should be able to generate a certificate, upload it to a couple nfc capable ubikey like devices that blow a fuse afterwards preventing from additional writes/reads and use that to login to every app ever. You would buy such devices in packs of 3, upload same cert to all, hide the other, burry the third.

ectoloph• 6 hours ago

Passkeys are a mitigation against users being bad at password hygiene and phishing being a real issue to users.

You can't phish a passkey, and you don't rely on the user providing you 'hunter2' on every site.

As for vendor lock in? No. The specs are open. You can run the code on a microcontroller, or, you can keep it in your arm with something like the Vivokey Apex. Note that the FIDO2 for the Apex is an open source Javacard applet.

The UX on the other hand is not great. If you have a password manager, your OS may prompt you which target to store the passkey with.

thyristan4• 4 hours ago

As for vendor lock in? No. The specs are open. You can run the code on a microcontroller, or, you can keep it in your arm with something like the Vivokey Apex. Note that the FIDO2 for the Apex is an open source Javacard applet.

That is not true. Passkeys support device attestation, enabling websites to lock you out if you don't use their approved devices. Which is happening with all the big platforms right now.

waffletower• 6 hours ago

The cumbersome and poorly designed workflows surrounding passkeys are a significant hindrance to their adoption as well. It surprised me how bad they were when they emerged -- it was as if the UX was intentionally designed to kill passkey adoption.

dang• 6 hours ago

I run a tech company and I have no idea what a passkey is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask

I thought I was the only one!

jimmydoe• 6 hours ago

lol it seems a good technical writing opportunity someone should take on.

also appreciate your attitude, better than "I work in tech for xx year, i don't understand yy, so yy must be bad."

cswelin• 4 hours ago

I find passkeys.. ill say interesting.

I can have the most complex password and create a passkey, but a windows machine could allow a 4 pin digit to access the passkey.

justSAYnooo• 6 hours ago

Consumer passkeys are just an extension of the OMB Policy Memorandum M-19-17, Enabling Mission Delivery through Improved Identity, Credential, and Access Management (dated May 21, 2019). It is ultimately part of anti terrorism efforts with regard to banking and fraud. Think of this as consumer computer version of the scene in the movie The Baader Meinhof Complex when the cops are discussing a proposal for electronic data processing. "According to a poll by the Allensbach Institute, one in four Germans under 30 sympathizes with the RAF. That's nearly 7 million people. That amounts to an enormous pool of sympathizers, which makes the search for perpetrators extremely difficult." It signals the end of publicly available general computing. This was always inevitable, the mob cannot be trusted with weapons of mass destruction. Computers = Guns

WesolyKubeczek• 6 hours ago

Passkeys do have drawbacks and tradeoffs, as has everything, but my god did I feel the energy of „lol I’m so bad at math” in that tweet and a lot of „lol smelly nerds” in replies.

beaker52• 6 hours ago

Passkeys are a political play aimed at bolstering government support. They’re the privacy sabotaging arm of Digital ID. They go hand in hand with “age” verification. It’s all the same play. Get your identity, get your access credentials, give it to the prying eyes.

EPWN3D• 6 hours ago

I don't know everything there is to know about passkeys or anything, but my reaction to most of these comments is "You're passing yourself off as someone who has relevant opinions about security, and you can't possibly imagine how these things work or how they're useful? Come the fuck on."

Passkeys are basically session cookies that are signed by a secure element in one of your devices at the time you log in. That's it. They cannot be phished because there is no password to steal. If I had to guess, the basic flow is something like this:

1. When the passkey is created, the device's secure element coughs up a public key or something to the server representing itself as a trusted device

2. When a user logs in, the server issues a challenge (basically a random number) to the device and says "sign this with a private key that corresponds to one of the trusted public keys I have"

3. The secure element signs the challenge and sends it back

4. The server goes through its list of trusted device public keys until it finds one that verifies the challenge response. If it finds one, it logs you in. If it doesn't, you don't log in

Step (1) is probably bootstrapped with a username/password and second factor like SMS 2FA, OTP, or email 2FA.

Even if this isn't exactly how they work, it's a plausible implementation. Nothing about this requires vendor lock-in. The various secure elements that can produce passkeys come from many different places, so I'm sure sufficiently motivated open source people could create a firmware TPM that is certified for use with passkeys or something if they cared enough.

gchamonlive• 5 hours ago

I really don't get passkeys and how they are supposed to be safer.

Currently I save all login tuples to Bitwarden and store OTP secrets onto Aegis. Could have been 1password and authy, it's irrelevant. The thing is, I only get pwned if both are compromised.

Now with ubiquitous passkeys in Bitwarden if someone has access to my vault unencrypted it's already endgame.

legitster• 5 hours ago

I think about this a lot when using our corporate SSO tool.

When I hit the button to log into Slack, there are like, 3 popups in succession - the last one ultimately asking for my fingerprint. Then when I give it, there is a flurry of web pages that get loaded and redirects that happen until finally Slack pops up again.

There isn't any realistic world in which I check each window to make sure everything is happening right and I am not being MitM'd.

I'm a fairly technical person, and I would be unable to perceive the difference between a really tight security environment and my computer being hijacked.

joshuamorton2• 3 hours ago

The point of passkeys is that you don't need to. Unlike passwords, your session cannot be hijacked because the thing that you give your fingerprint cryptographically verified the requester.

jerednel• 3 hours ago

Aren’t passkeys intrinsically resistant to those attacks? With hardware security keys, the private key remains on the device, never crosses the network, and is cryptographically bound to the site being authenticated.

ghostly_s3• 5 hours ago

We've all been through at least a couple rounds now of the security industry pressing us to change how we log in, ostensibly in our best interest: impractical complexity requirements, 2FA, "magic links," ridiculously short session expiry, whatever this bullshit is with the username and password on separate pages that make your password manager less convenient.

The only observable outcome of each of these changes has been making these products less convenient for us to use. At this point I don't think I am alone in being knee-jerk opposed to any further "improvements." I have yet to see a website make a case for a passkey being more convenient than what it is replacing, so I will continue opting out of them as long as I am allowed to.

dp-hackernews• 5 hours ago

Why not use SQRL instead?

MBCook• 5 hours ago

I will never understand how a small group of tech savvy people are heavily confused and against a simple and more secure system.

You want anecdotes? Ok. I’ve had elderly adult relatives who aren’t good with their devices tell me unprompted they’re using them and like them when I mentioned the word out loud to myself using my phone around them.

These are people who don’t know the difference between apps and the web. Who have 200 tabs open because they don’t know what tabs are so a new one just gets opened automatically all the time. Can’t tell some websites apart. Who change their passwords on every login to some sites because they can’t get sign in right.

Yeah if you want to write them down or refuse to save passwords outside text files or demand they live on a security key on your keychain you’ll have a hard time. You’re being 0.0000001% of the user population. You’re not representative.

They are a MASSIVE UX win. A MASSIVE security win.

I’ve logged into my work computer with a passkey on my personal phone, no issue. It’s fine. They’re backed up locally. It’s fine.

The biggest problem, which is getting better and somewhat a transition problem, is sites using terrible UX to trigger the workflow. Those that follow the suggestions or close to it are great.

I love passkeys. I just don’t get the confusion.

TSiege• 5 hours ago

I've yet to meet a non tech person irl who uses them. I went through the laborious process years ago setting my parents up with 1Password. They find passkeys very confusing addition. I have yet to see the massive UX win. If that were true I don't think we'd be having this conversation. Good UX becomes the natural state of things and we don't even notice. I've had trouble myself setting up passkeys correctly with my 1Password. This never happens with traditional passwords and 1Password

bombcar2• 5 hours ago

The win for passkeys is login with faceID. That people actually use.

AlexandrB5• 4 hours ago

My elderly mother accidentally created a passkey (in Chrome) for one of her accounts. Normally, I try to keep a copy of her accounts and passwords in case she forgets them so I can help her out. With the passkey, this is impossible.

She doesn't know how she created one, she doesn't know what it is, and I don't know how to explain to her that if her PC dies I won't be able to help her log back into her account. I'm not even sure how I'm going to migrate this thing to a new PC for her.

modeless2• 5 hours ago

I find Google Password Manager makes passkeys pretty easy to use. As long as you don't accidentally create a passkey some other way. Hopefully websites will adapt to the reality of how people use passkeys in practice and some of the UX weirdness around them will disappear over time.

One annoying thing though is that while they recently added password sharing, they don't allow sharing passkeys. Basic passkey sharing would be nice, but it also seems possible to implement fancy sharing features that wouldn't be possible with password sharing. Things like sharing one time use passkeys or time limited passkeys or limited access passkeys or secure revocation of shared passkeys. I hope people are thinking about this.

cube003• 3 hours ago

Considering Google's track record of locking people out of their accounts it'd be very risky to trust them with your password manager.

modeless2• 2 hours ago

This is very far from the top of the list of risks I should be concerned about. Basing your security decisions on the frequency with which you hear about something bad happening in the news is not a wise strategy. You have to consider that the user base of Google accounts is in the billions.

epistasis5• 5 hours ago

I think the problem was that there wasn't a "Best Practices" way of using them when they were launched, which really prevented describing them in a consumer-friendly way.

And web site implementors couldn't follow that golden path, or describe the golden path, so there's fragmentation in usage and meanings and practices, making it far more confusing.

I love passkeys, I want to eliminate any and all password-based logins and switch entirely to passkeys. It's such a better experience, it's a "physical" key that can be backed up to multiple devices, and thinking of it like a key for a physical lock really gets at the core of its capabilities. But locks can be used in many many ways! Maybe you need to open the lock and still tell the guard a password, which is weird, but how most websites still operate.

christina97• 5 hours ago

It’s quite the opposite. Passkeys are phenomenal for a lot of consumers. Based on this thread, it’s the engineers who understand authentication in the first place and have their own system (eg password manager) that are confused.

Consider a user in the Apple ecosystem: you are already conditioned to just do Touch ID or Face ID when asked. I was on Amazon the other day, it prompted randomly for “want to set up a passkey to sign in easier”? I set it up and now I can easily sign in to Amazon on my mac or iphone with zero friction.

For the normal consumer this is not a replacement for “dig out my password manager and copy-paste/autofill my password”, it’s a replacement for “oh it’s prompting for my password again” -> proceed to type your shared password for all sites.

selicos4• 4 hours ago

A password manager let's me use my service specific credential from any device, securely and decentralized.

Passkeys lock into a specific device and seem easy until you need to use another device.

But instead of being a credential you own and control, across what could even be a local password manager, it's one password to everything. Maybe it is more secure than a regular password in some cases but it largely seems like a worse fix than existing tools for a problem that has better solutions.

eigenspace3• 4 hours ago

Passkeys do *not* do that. I use 1Password to manage my passkeys and they are all synced across all my authenticated devices where I installed 1Password.

voxic113• 4 hours ago

I put my passkeys in my password manager and it works fine.

yandie• 4 hours ago

I keep all my passkeys in 1 password. So magical

QGQBGdeZREunxLe2• 3 hours ago

1password and KeypassXC both support passkey syncing across devices and operating systems.

mpalmer• 2 hours ago

    it's one password to everything

You are entirely mistaken. Passkeys involve a third party storing a public key on their infrastructure, while you hold the private half of the key, somewhere.

Passkeys are never reused. Even for the same person, they are always unique across websites, and across devices.

ekjhgkejhgk• 4 hours ago

I refuse to be part of an "ecosystem".

eigenspace3• 2 hours ago

KeepassXC is free, open source, and supports passkeys. You can locally store your encrypted password vault wherever you like, and transport it between devices using physical media if you like (or self host your own personal storage synchronization server and sync your passkeys between devices like that).

No need to be a part of an 'ecosystem' to use a password manager or passkeys.

epistasis5• 2 hours ago

Too late, you're using web standards, you're part of an ecosystem.

arcbyte• 3 hours ago

The moment my mom needs my help to login to something because she clicked the button but now it's expired / she got a new phone / raison du jur, I will be totally unable to assist her. It's a horrible concept being foisted on unsuspecting victims.

dewey• 2 hours ago

Passkeys are phenomenal for a lot of consumers.

It already falls apart for regular interactions like "Can you send me the Netflix password?"

giancarlostoro5• 2 hours ago

I can easily sign in to Amazon on my mac or iphone with zero friction.

And Windows, you need Bluetooth enabled on both devices, on Linux you need Chrome (and presumably bluetooth enabled). It makes you scan a QR code.

HaZeust• 1 hour ago

"Consider a user in the Apple ecosystem"

Already you're off-base. Of course it works when your devices are homogenized, but very little folks work that way. Some people have a Windows computer using Brave, an iPhone using Safari, an Android device using Chrome, and a work computer with its own hardware/software limitations and partitions.

Of course it works when your ecosystems are not diversified. Problem is, most people are.

gwbas1c• 53 minutes ago

I've found passkeys generally simple and easy to use on MacOS and Android.

On Windows, I hate them. They always push me towards using a PIN instead of my Yubikey or password.

TechRemarker• 5 hours ago

Yes, a bit of a mess. As the only practical way for most to use is with a password manager. So essentially, all your accounts still have a real password, just you enter that into your password manager app. So if your device is every compromised and someone has your master password then you are screwed.

And of course, passkeys on most all sites don't really improve security since someone can just choose to login with user/pass instead since presumably very few sites allow you to have just passkey.

Also if you use a password manager you may get locked into using that platform. Or ideally using a third party one but then having to pay a subscription, or using an open source option that is not ideal for the average person.

If one uses a passkey as intended and without a password manager and the site truly only supports logging in via your passkey, for all the touted benefits of passkeys, that would be a nightmare if a person loses access to their device, etc.

rglover• 5 hours ago

This is mostly a complaint about bad copy/explainers in Google's UI. Passkeys, properly implemented, can be perfectly consumer friendly (e.g., Apple Touch ID is delightful).

baking• 5 hours ago

I find it annoying that gmail has simply decided that my unlocked phone is more secure than my computer.

lrvick• 5 hours ago

At Caution we -exclusively- allow passkeys. The entire database is user ids and public keys. If it leaks, it would only be mildly annoying.

If you are confused about digital passkeys, you can use a physical yubikey or nitrokey and tap it when it blinks. You can treat them like a credit card or house keys.

Asking people to keep up with and remember passwords is and always has been the thing that was invented with zero understanding of the consumer brain.

tavavex• 3 hours ago

-exclusively- allow passkeys

Isn't that just a euphemism for "we mandate passkeys"? Saying 'exclusively allow' draws the reader's attention to the positive (allowing!) while de-emphasizing what's not permitted.

Regardless, I think it's a lot less of an issue for services exclusively oriented at people in tech instead of just everyone. Even then, there is a barrier to adoption besides just understanding it, which is relying on new software or owning a piece of hardware. It's a lot messier, while text remains universal and has no dependencies.

luciana1u• 5 hours ago

the real achievement of passkeys is making people nostalgic for passwords

c7b• 5 hours ago

UX is not the problem with Passkeys. Passkeys were designed to align with the interests of BigTech, who are bent on stopping the abomination that is general computing devices in the hands of consumers and forcing them into their walled gardens. The language that is used for taking away freedoms is the same as always, safety. Where we ended up with Passkeys is an operating model that is suitable for corporate devices, i.e. the user can only do what the owners of the device allow them to. Suboptimal UX is downstream from that problem.

jeroenhd4• 51 minutes ago

Passkeys work just fine with Bitwarden, LastPass, KeepassXC, physical keys, several software tokens, and TPM storage.

So far only Nintendo has been absolute assholes about requiring specific passkeys, but that's maybe the least assholish thing Nintendo has done.

827a• 5 hours ago

Passkeys are so, so, so bad. One of the worst things our industry invented. The sooner sites start leaving them on the wayside and just go back to TOTP, SMS, and Email codes/links, the better. These work. We solved auth. Its fine.

et1337• 4 hours ago

Throwing my hat in the ring, I think passkeys were also invented by engineers with zero understanding of the average developer: https://etodd.io/2026/04/06/passkeys-are-too-hard/

sergiotapia• 4 hours ago

One of the worst technologies I've had the misfortune of being forced to use honestly. It's always confusing and always breaking or not working as I expect across my devices?

deaux• 4 hours ago

This comment section is the best example of all time of the arrogance of Big Tech and its employees. Please try to take a second thinking outside of your bubble before commenting ridiculous stuff.

Yes, as a wealthy American, you "live in the Apple ecosystem". 99% of the world doesn't. And guess what, they're affected by passkeys all the same. They use a Windows laptop, and either an Android phone or iPhone. A lot of people even have an Android phone and an iPad. And no laptop at all. But at work or school they have to use Windows.

It's quite simple. Besides people "living in a single ecosystem" (discussed above, this is almost nobody), passkeys are only viable (i.e. not very painful to use) if you use a dedicated cross-platform password manager. Yet people who use those - which too is a globally negligible percentage - are exactly the people who tend to have near nothing to gain from passkeys, and only to lose. The majority of them is tech-savvy and they use auto-generated unique passwords. In that scenario, the minuscule improvement in security is meaningless and not worth it.

Ironically, this comment section shows exactly why passkeys are a shit show. Half the people here are exactly those who are coming up with this shit in their FAANG jobs, happily part of the global 1% (of which their tech-illiterate grandma too is part of), and they have no idea or care in the world for the remaining 99%. Unless of course this was simply a land grab for lock-in, which is about as likely.

maples37• 4 hours ago

I'd like to try passkeys out. I actually tried again on Amazon in response to reading the comments here. But it just.... doesn't work?

I'm on a laptop running Ubuntu, I use Firefox as my browser, and I use 1Password as my password manager. I have both the browser extension and native Linux application installed, and they sync/communicate with each other (so if I unlock the native Linux app, the browser extension also unlocks).

When I open my Amazon.com item in 1Password, it has a helpful link to https://passkeys.directory/details/amazon which tells you clearly, step-by-step how to set up a passkey. Great! I love clear directions.

But when I get to the step when I click the "Set Up" passkey, Firefox gives me an address bar pop-up saying "Touch your security to continue with www.amazon.com".

Huh?

I don't have a security key. My laptop does have a fingerprint reader, which I use to unlock my screensaver (and it's integrated with some KDE keyring thing), so I tried putting my finger on that. Nothing. I opened the 1Password extension. Nothing there, just normal view of my login info. I opened the 1Password native application. Nothing there either.

Maybe it's a Firefox issue, or a Linux issue? So I tried setting it up on my phone (running GrapheneOS and their Chromium-based browser), which has the 1Password app installed. I logged in, and this time got far enough that 1Password brought up a prompt asking "Do you want to save this passkey?" I tapped Yes, and it then immediately told me "Unable to save passkey: For security reasons, 1Password did not save this passkey. The associated URL for this passkey does not match the selected app." So... does that mean 1Password is refusing to touch the passkey because it didn't come from the com.google.chrome Android application?

This whole experience has re-affirmed my skepticism of passkeys in practice. I think it would be awesome to have public/private key security on my online accounts. I think it would be great if I could log in without having to copy/paste passwords (when autofill doesn't work, or for TOTP codes). But I have zero confidence that this opaque stream of bytes will actually work to get me logged in to my account. When the 1Password input field detection fails, I sigh, copy/paste my username and password, and then forget about the mild inconvenience after about 30 seconds. I don't even want to think about what would happen to an account if the only way to log in to an account was via passkeys.

jbombadil• 4 hours ago

Another noteworthy annoyance is the increasing number of services that try to aggressively push you towards passkeys, without you ever asking.

Every other time I open the Costco app (needed to walk in to the store, since I don't carry my card and they refuse to provide Apple Wallet integration) I get asked to switch to passkey, without a way of saying "don't ask me again".

If you're in any position to determine this in your company/software, please stop this pattern. Give users the option to say "stop asking me about passkeys".

tossitawayplz• 4 hours ago

The first time I got asked by a site if I wanted to use a passkey I immediately googled what they were and... never really found the answer, not in the 5mins I devoted to being distracting from my task at hand anyway.

"magic fairy dust to login to apps." is the most accurate description I've seen.

Unlike a password or a TOTP token, I know how those work, I know its my responsibility to keep track of them. If my passkey is on my phone what happens if I lose my phone? Do I need a unique passkey per device? How do I rotate them? What if a device gets stolen?

I'm so glad I'm not alone in thinking these are so poorly explained.

preisschild5• 4 hours ago

You can use both hardware bound passkeys (where you may not even be able to read the secret so you probably would want to add multiple device passkeys to a site)

or shared passkeys (where the private key can be synced through something like a cloud service across your devices, see Bitwarden, iCloud)

junaru2• 3 hours ago

hardware based

Sounds good until you realise theres no way to transfer/back them up and you are limited to 100 [1] (previously 25?).

Personally my password manager has almost 4x the entries so hardware passkey solutions are a joke leaving users with single option - upload their keychains to ms/apple/etc clouds where they can be requested by any gov under the sun for x reasons.

[1] https://support.yubico.com/s/article/How-many-accounts-can-I...

johngalt2• 3 hours ago

Think of it like SSH authorized keys but automated for the web. Instead of storing the keys in a file; it stores them in a hardware security module (yubikey, or TPM).

Registration generates an asymmetric key pair between your passkey, and the website. Login is the usual challenge/response process. The biggest step forward is phishing resistance. A fake login page can relay a TOTP code, but not the passkey challenge/response.

polalavik• 3 hours ago

100% had said something to the tune of this months ago in another thread on passkeys

Passkeys need a marketing campaign and UX overhaul. I’m a technical guy, but I really don’t understand what the fuck is going on when I use a passkey. All I know is one day it appeared as an option and it let me login to things. I don’t really understand where it lives, what device it’s tied to, how scanning a QR code on Google Chrome on my phone magically logs me in, etc etc.

The user was not educated on this. Hacker News is the top 1% of computer power users. You gotta understand to someone’s grandma or mom or brother who works in real estate none of this makes any sense nor will they educate themselves on what it is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46301585#46303892

otikik• 4 hours ago

Ah! Like Pgp

joshstrange• 4 hours ago

My biggest issues with Passkeys is how inconsistently they are implemented and how opaque they attempt to be.

I understand SSH keys, I've been using them for decades, I know where they live, I know how to secure them.

Passkeys are murky as fuck. Is your PW manager supported? Do they sync? Where are they stored? How can I move to another PW manager if I want to in the future? Can I have more than 1 passkey per site? And the list goes on.

I _know_ some of you out there can answer some/all of the questions above but it's mostly on a per-site basis. Passkeys take too much of the control out of my hands and I don't like that.

Even more than that, I hate how they are trying to be pushed on me at every turn. Login -> Want to save a passkey (but they never call it that, they use some other confusing euphemism)? I click "No" and then it proceeds to pop 1Password's UI, then I dismiss that and it opens Chrome's passkey save UI, I dismiss that, and then it opens the OS's passkey UI. It's incredibly disrespectful and unclear.

I never use anything but 1Password but somehow everyone (OS and Browser) try to reach their grubby hands in. This is what scares me, I don't like having to be on high-alert to not accidentally save a passkey in Chrome or Safari and not realize until I'm on a different device and notice it's not in 1Password.

Lastly I trust the developers implementing passkeys... none, I trust them none, zero, zilch. I don't trust them to pick the right defaults, I don't trust their recovery options, and I know they will always pick the configuration that benefits them and not me.

No, for now I'll stick with my as-long-as-you-let-me-make-my-password random passwords which I never copy/paste into random website and be perfectly safe, thank you.

stalfosknight• 4 hours ago

I do not understand all of the drama surrounding passkeys. They work flawlessly for me on all my devices. Maybe that’s because I’m all-in on Apple devices, but I have yet to have a single problem with passkeys.

apparent• 4 hours ago

I don't use passkeys because I can't tell if they're a one-way door. If I use it once, can I still use passwords to log in in the future?

I also don't understand how the system works when things go wrong (someone hacks your account, etc.). I don't even understand all the ways things could go wrong with passkeys.

Seeing the comments here makes me realize I'm not stupid or ignorant for not understanding these things. Some people do understand them much better than me, but there is no universal answer that emerges after sufficient study.

I will continue to stay away from passkeys.

johngalt2• 4 hours ago

If you want a consistent, and seamless authentication experience, then one party has to own that experience. Go federation/SSO. Sign into everything with microsoft, or google as your identity provider, and live with the privacy implications.

Passkeys are great, and they take a significant amount of work away from the user, and make them much less prone to phishing attacks while also not turning their entire online identity into the property of google. I've had much more luck with onboarding non-technical people into a yubikey vs a password manager. Platform authenticators tend to trip people up. However, the process of adding a new key is getting much more consistent, and legible to people over time, and things will settle on platform authenticators rather than external physical keys for most use cases.

AJRF• 4 hours ago

I keep seeing people working on Passkeys get real defensive when told they don't make sense to people.

I've worked in tech 12+ years and I _hate_ when a Passkey prompt comes up, its only ever slowed me down.

But the devs who work on them are quite rabid, and keep dismissing real criticism of their implementation.

TitaRusell2• 4 hours ago

Security people don't care about usability. They genuinely think we are all CIA field agents.

Look I remember my PIN everything else is in Firefox password manager.

JohnFen5• 3 hours ago

Security people don't care about usability.

I spent a long time working in the network security field, and you speak truth. The perverse thing about it is that security people should care a lot about usability. If the scheme isn't usable enough, people will figure out how to bypass it or aspects of it.

The technically weaker security scheme that everybody accepts is more secure than the technically stronger security scheme that everybody tries to bypass.

Dwedit• 4 hours ago

I just stick with TOTP.

ChoGGi2• 4 hours ago

Passkeys? That shit that's not a password or a crypto key that I never use?

brachkow• 3 hours ago

Passkeys work well when you have password managers with multi-device sync. While it is indeed trivial to get one, consumers don't like password managers in first place. And it is very hard to make person use password manager, instead of his john1988 type of password

f30e3dfed1c9• 3 hours ago

My take: (1) I've had passwords handled pretty well for a long time now: same password manager for something like 15 years; (2) companies are pushing pretty hard to get me to use passkeys instead.

From (2) I assume that the companies see benefits to themselves. I don't care about benefits to them. I don't see much in the way of benefits to me, so I'm not changing anything if I don't have to.

I'll admit to not having looked into passkeys all that much. Someday, I might. But for the time being, I don't see much point. I imagine that eventually I'll be more or less forced to deal with passkeys in at least some contexts. Will leave that for later.

For now, it's all a big "no thanks" from me.

randomblock1• 3 hours ago

Stop thinking of them as alternatives to passwords. That is something they do, incidentally. Really, they are an alternative to normal TOTP 2FA (and shudders SMS 2FA). Those were already dependent on an app on a single device, or a password manager. And now, you can have the security of that, automatically used with biometrics. It is only because they are so secure, due to being a cryptographic key, that they can replace passwords.

They really should come up with a way to transfer them across devices/password managers though.

techteach00• 3 hours ago

I like the authenticator option. I literally cannot understand if that's the same thing as passkeys.

thescriptkiddie• 3 hours ago

Imagine you’re a boomer and you just figured out how to store your passwords

i'm gonna stop you right there

tonymet• 3 hours ago

The fundamental blind spot engineers have had with every authentication protocol for 30 years is forgetting that trust must be mutual. The lone exception has been phishing prevention with user-selected avatars, and that didn't last long.

Every advancement in "security" has assumed the service needs to more strictly identify the customer, without caring about the customer's trust for the service, or experience with performing the identification ritual.

So when your bank asks you for a code or your mom's maiden name, they never offer anything to verify they are who they say they are. whenever I ask they say "of course we're from chase, we just called you", without realizing how absurd that is.

Now Passkeys suffer an even worse dilemma. Now the customer has 4 dimensions of tools to record & use in order to log in. Did I use email, google, facebook, apple ID to log in? Did I save this code via phone, text, authenticator app (which one, there are multiple incompatible ones)? Did I use a passkey ? where is that passkey located? my phone, my browser storage, my authentication extension.

We started with a single dimension of email + password to log in. Now it's an entire decision tree that has to be recorded. How do you even record this?

  disqus :  credential = email, password = "see bitwarden", 2fa = microsoft authenticator, passkey = "on iphone in icloud"

  viator: credential = google sso, password = same, 2fa = symantec, passkey = "edge on windows 11 laptop in office"

This is absolutely absurd!

I thought engineers were tested for scaling during the interview process. This protocol doesn't even scale to a single site.

qurren• 3 hours ago

Reminds me of Yishan Wong's description of OpenID's failure:

https://www.quora.com/What%E2%80%99s-wrong-with-OpenID-Why-h...

vaylian• 3 hours ago

Obligatory https://fy.blackhats.net.au/blog/2024-04-26-passkeys-a-shatt...

It's a shame, because WebAuthn is really great technology. But tech companies are botching the rollout.

FireInsight• 2 hours ago

Okay, I'm a tech nerd I admit it, but for my personal authentication life I find passkeys to make sense.

All my passwords and SSH key are already in Bitwarden. When a site starts supporting passkeys, I add that to Bitwarden as well. Now, instead of logging in by auto-filling my username and password, I just press the passkey login button (that hopefully exists) and click on the Bitwarden popup to select the account. It's less button presses for me, and I cannot be phished, nor can my passkeys be leaked on the dark web. All thanks to some fancy cryptography.

Okay, sure, if someone steals my Bitwarden vault by snatching my laptop while it's unlocked or something, I end up pretty screwed. That security aspect did not change, so I still use TOTP for all important services.

Also, I've made one invite-only web app where single-use invite codes and passkeys are the only ways to log in. It was not too hard, it was fun, actually. And I get the peace of mind that account sharing is pretty much impossible were a bad actor able to get their hands on an invite, as is hacking other people's accounts.

(Okay, I concede that I've had to help multiple people who find passkeys confusing as a result of this whimsical decision, and that it just might be that nobody is using my web app for real. So I'm just speaking from nerd privilege here... But it works well, trust me!!)

ab71e5• 16 minutes ago

So what do you use for TOTP? Also bitwarden?

66fm472tjy72• 2 hours ago

It seems to me like those who like passkeys/consider them simple are those who entrust all their credentials to proprietary cloud software vendors that sync them to all their devices.

Those of us who are not comfortable with that and want to keep our credentials offline and sync/backup them ourselves have questions about how the registration/backup/sharing flows work exactly.

I see this as part of a trend together with remote attestation, age verification, CSAM scanning, restricting sideloading, etc that will lead to most interactions over the internet only being allowed if big tech and/or government can verify the participants, the contents, and the hardware and software used.

Even among techies, many support these developments, so it is just a matter of time before we have no choice but to join the former group.

epistasis5• 2 hours ago

I do love the cloud version of passkeys, but I also have a backup YubiKey. I could do two backup YubiKeys, drop the cloud, and keep one YubiKey in a safe deposit box and one elsewhere, but I haven't had much reason to yet.

A passkey doesn't give up anything compared to a password, and is in fact much much easier to handle, IMHO. I have kept all of my private SSH keys in secure hardware for a decade, so perhaps I'm more used to carrying a physical key than others, but IMHO it's all better, all around.

We should eliminate passwords, and that has nothing to do with remote attestation, age verification, or anything like that.

For 20 years, I've only known two to three passwords at any time, and those are login passwords for separate boxes or corporate/home accounts. Beyond that, hardware access should solve everything, and I shouldn't have to type any passwords anywhere. Every account needs granular credentials, not shared credentials, but no user should have to memorize passwords beyond one per work domain.

66fm472tjy72• 2 hours ago

I do love the cloud version of passkeys, but I also have a backup YubiKey

How does this work, exactly? Does you cloud password/key manager allow syncing to the YubiKey?

Or do you register a second passkey that you store on the YubiKey whenever you create a passkey?

If it is the latter, do all services that allow passkey authentication also allow registering multiple passkeys? How many?

could do two backup YubiKeys [...] keep one YubiKey in a safe deposit box

If you register a new passkey on the primary, do you then have to take the backup YubiKey out of the safe deposit box to put it on it as well?

I haven't seen this kind of question answered when sites prompt me to use passkeys instead of passwords.

allthetime• 2 hours ago

I use Apple based passkeys to log into everything I can now. I have given it virtually no thought since all my relevant accounts and rolled out support. My non-technical close friends and family (consumer brains) have also done the same. I imagine it is a different case for non-Apple device users, but in the Apple case, passkeys are zero friction and truly life-enhancing for anyone who logs into things

Slackwise• 2 hours ago

I recently logged into my CVS.com account after not touching it for years, and I couldn't find the password reset..... turns out they no longer use passwords at all; only Passkeys and tokens via email/SMS.

Aside from email accounts potentially being compromised or SMS interception, this is honestly the way all sites should be going now. But more seriously, there should be a way to use only Passkeys with a backup identification method in case you lose your Passkey.

The new threat? Browser password managers are insecure. Anyone can sit down at my machine if it's unlocked and Passkey their way into any of my accounts. What good is that? Why doesn't Chrome use my Google account password before allowing auto-fill/login? (Obviously I don't use Chrome's password manager, but it's a real concern for everyone else.)

epistasis5• 2 hours ago

I agree with your anti-password take, 100%. But all my passkeys have biometrics attached to them, mostly so that I know that they are being used, when they are being used. Silent release of authentication credentials is a scary security mode. A YubiKey with a press mechanism is enough, I just happened to buy the biometric version. Or use the biometric lock on iCloud Keychain passkeys.

eigencoder• 2 hours ago

I hate passkeys so much. They're so confusingly implemented.

pronik• 1 hour ago

I'm probably not the only one to have a deep distrust in passkeys. I've deep-dived in to what they are and how they work and I think I can accept them on their technical merits, but I can't shake the feeling that the adoption has been way faster than we've been used to, for whatever reason. I think it was half a year between the settling down of the specification to being bombarded by a "Get a passkey!" from every goddamn website on this earth. I don't really see what the conspiracy to move the whole world to passkeys would be here, but it certainly feels like there is one.

I think my problem with passkeys is the same as with almost everything today: if I lose my phone, my digital life will be almost as difficult to recover as if I lost my ID and my birth certificate at the same time. Yes, that's why you don't create one passkey (phone), but maybe two or three (browsers), but that's mental load on myself -- I don't even try to explain that stuff to my parents, even something as (somewhat) easy to use as a password manager is out of their scope. Add TOTP and passkeys on top of that and you've got perfect security that no-one in their right minds is using. No idea how to resolve the problem, but it's not by shoving a solution down our throats with a vengeance.

unbolted3032• 1 hour ago

The thing that gets me is that to even use a Passkey I need a browser addon that syncs my entire password vault into browser memory, the same memory that all the adtech JS runs! No thank you! What a ridiculous system. I will continue copying and pasting passwords myself out of KeePassXC.

mmmpetrichor• 1 hour ago

My Health savings account provider is trying to force the use of passkeys. I assumed it was a cynical attempt to force the use of their app, which I never needed or wanted, but now seemingly will be required to use.

VCFundedGenYer2• 1 hour ago

Passkeys bother me because they depend on the availability of another device. That just won't cut it for a lot of folks, especially people that are prone to losing devices. It's also annoying to have to deal with the 50,000 places that are fighting to keep your passkeys, leading to fragmentation and uncertainty as to where these credentials are stored.

Haphazardly implementing passkeys also has big problems - one vendor I use implemented them rather badly and randomly one day, completely removing the previously-solid password/MFA setup they had, replacing it with a "you are required to confirm on your phone with no other alternative" passkey, which was really annoying. I don't like my logins messed with. Passwords/MFA, while not perfect, work very well for most people, myself included. Passkeys still feel like they are in a very immature state.

ChrisMarshallNY• 57 minutes ago

Have to agree. They are, indeed, very safe and effective, but no user that usually picks "fuckyouhacker" as a password, is gonna use them, given a choice.

t1234s• 55 minutes ago

The idea of passkeys is good (similar to key pairs you use with ssh if I understand correctly) but how and where they get stored is the problem. Especially if you use multiple computers / devices.

Something like a yubikey makes sense for this until you lose it and your fucked. From what I understand you cant clone a yubi key to keep a backup somewhere safe.

In the end the solution will be some sort of cloud based storage for these keys where the NSA can have easy access.

upcoming-sesame• 54 minutes ago

I love passkeys.

The only confusion I have with them is around when they are used just as a 2fa (most cases) and when they can replace passwords completely (just one click and you're in)

Unfortunately very few services offer #2 not sure why

boarsofcanada• 43 minutes ago

I’m absolutely floored by some of what I am reading here. Six months before passkeys rolled out there were numerous succinct consumer-friendly write-ups. I sent at least one of these to several non-technical people I knew and they had no problem understanding the benefit and moving to using them where available once they started rolling out.

eviks• 22 minutes ago

Would be helpful if you provided at least 1 example

gblargg2• 41 minutes ago

I don't care how it works, but as long as it requires me to physically have some device to log in (and doesn't have a backup, like emailing me or calling me), it puts security in my hands.

sauercrowd• 39 minutes ago

I used to think this but once you treat them as another path to get in they become really useful.

Yes, you still have your 2fa and password, but you create a fast path in addition to it when you get in.

It became even more useful once I stopped insisting they have to go into 1password

nottorp• 38 minutes ago

Passkeys were invented by security engineers with zero understanding of the consumer brain.

... of the human brain.

Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain

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