alt Hacker NewsI don’t know if it’s productive for me to talk about how a headline is off-putting, but I’m going to mention it because, well, it’s a headline, and a headline is a strong first impression.
Is the audience of this article the kind of people who are already using passkeys and like them? Because, if so, we’re starting at a deficit here. The author is out to get my beloved passkeys that have saved me so much time and pain.
Are passkeys perfect? No. Are they even very good for no-technical users? Absolutely not…they’re incredibly confusing for that kind of person if you ask me.
However, for my workflow, I’ll take them over a password+2FA type of situation where logging in is such an annoyance. The security part of the discussion is very interesting and a lot of the things in this article are stuff that I didn’t know before reading it.
The issue is that, putting on my user hat, I just don’t care. As long as my accounts are reasonably secure I’m much more concerned about ease of use and workflow.
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The intended audience is people who are not yet using passkeys, or have just started (due to all the websites demanding them now) but don't really know what they are.
I apologize that the headline is provocative. I thought for a long time about how to appeal to both people who are barely aware of what passkeys are but also not put off people who like them. I considered calling them a "Trojan Horse" in the headline as I do in the body (i.e. legitimately lovely, but with a terrible and unobvious problem) but "trojan" has another connotation in computer security.
Nonetheless, I said what I meant. Convenience is how they get you. This convenience didn't have to come with a trap, but thanks to the way it was designed, it does.
You don't care, until you use the wrong apple pay card and apple nukes your account and you can no longer login to anywhere because all your keys are in your now remotely bricked iphone.
Substitute apple with google, pay card with youtube comment and iphone with android for the "open" experience.