Passkeys have a marketing problem where no one is able to describe simply what it is without having to use technical jargon. There's also the problem where each OS tries too hard in pushing this to the face of end-user
Unlike physical objects they may reside in a TPM, a software vault, an export/backup, or any combination thereof. You may or may not be able to recover or migrate them, depending on where/how they were made.
Therefore you may need multiple per service, or maybe not. Services which only allow one may end up locking you out with no recourse. You get to find out.
None of this is obvious or self explanatory to normies.
Probably because these caveats and weird behaviours are platform-dependent, not really the passkey’s fault.
Passkeys really are not any more difficult to explain than 2-factor authentication. Anyone who’s currently been able to actually create an Apple or Google account and successfully navigate their devices up to a passkey screen will be able to grok how it works.
People around here really ought to stop thinking users are complete idiots. Hell, you don’t even to scroll that far to read people calling users “normies” for crying out loud. What is this? High school?
Do you know how many Google and Apple accounts my boomer parents have?
Roughly one per smart-phone that they've ever used. They don't know the passwords or even the email address of any of them, not even the latest.
Arguably Yubikey and similar are better. Even vanilla passwords are at least understood by my parents, despite their confusion over account proliferation. Passkeys are a step backward for them, even more so in light of account confusion.
I don't care about the theoretical sufficiently advanced keypass implementation that works perfectly. I want to know about the half baked ones in the real world that I'll have to deal with.
kenrick95 · · focus · HN ↗
etatester · · focus · HN ↗
Ironically on macOS we used to have an app called Keychain which unfortunately was effectively renamed to Passwords for non-technical users.
paulryanrogers · · focus · HN ↗
Unlike physical objects they may reside in a TPM, a software vault, an export/backup, or any combination thereof. You may or may not be able to recover or migrate them, depending on where/how they were made.
Therefore you may need multiple per service, or maybe not. Services which only allow one may end up locking you out with no recourse. You get to find out.
None of this is obvious or self explanatory to normies.
kskdkwkdkwk · · focus · HN ↗
Passkeys really are not any more difficult to explain than 2-factor authentication. Anyone who’s currently been able to actually create an Apple or Google account and successfully navigate their devices up to a passkey screen will be able to grok how it works.
People around here really ought to stop thinking users are complete idiots. Hell, you don’t even to scroll that far to read people calling users “normies” for crying out loud. What is this? High school?
alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
paulryanrogers · · focus · HN ↗
Roughly one per smart-phone that they've ever used. They don't know the passwords or even the email address of any of them, not even the latest.
etatester · · focus · HN ↗
paulryanrogers · · focus · HN ↗
cpburns2009 · · focus · HN ↗