Technology giants Google, Apple and Microsoft on Thursday announced an agreement to build a system to authenticate without passwords to connect to online services. Unable to manage so many different passwords made of combinations of numbers, letters, and symbols, individuals often reuse the same one, which facilitates account takeovers, data leaks, and identity theft.
“With the new feature, consumers will be able to authenticate to websites and mobile apps easily, password-free and securely, regardless of device or operating system,” FIDO said. Alliance (Fast Identity Online Alliance) in a press release.
Since 2012, the Alliance has brought together artisans from the technology sector to work on common authentication systems. The goal, according to Google, is for Internet users to be able to log in to an online service simply by unlocking their smartphone (through their usual method: fingerprint, facial recognition, multi-digit code, or whatever. Concretely, a website can ask the person if they “authenticate themselves with their FIDO credentials. This message will appear simultaneously on their phone, where the Internet user will just need to accept, by unlocking their screen, to connect to the The smart phones will keep these coded identifiers, called “passkey” (access keys).
The three technology giants have committed to implementing this new system within 12 months, on Android and iOS (the mobile operating systems of Google and Apple), on Chrome, Edge and Safari (the browsers of Google , from Microsoft and Apple) and on Windows and macOS (Microsoft and Apple’s operating systems for computers).
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