You’ll no longer need to type in your password the next time you log into your Amazon account. The e-commerce giant is adding support for “passkeys” which would allow users to log into their account using the preferred medium they’d use generally to log into their phones such as fingerprint or face or PIN. Passkey support is rolling out globally on web and iOS which is to say that users accessing Amazon on browsers and iPhones through the dedicated app are good to go while support for Android is on the way as we speak.
Created by FIDO and the World Wide Web Consortium, passkeys aim to allow apps and websites to have a single, secure, and unified login across different devices and platforms like Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS. Passwords are more susceptible to security breaches including phishing and data leaks. The chances of being hacked are even bigger when passwords are reused. Even 2-Step Verification (2SV) is prone to phishing and targeted attacks like SIM swaps. Passkeys are being billed as both a more convenient and safer alternative to passwords.
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“This is about giving customers ease-of-use and security simultaneously in their Amazon experience,” Dave Treadwell, senior vice president of e-commerce at Amazon was quoted in a blog post outlining the announcement.
The idea behind passkeys is that users will make use of the same actions— fingerprint or face, or a PIN— that they use multiple times each day to, also, log into apps and websites. Since all this data resides locally on device, already, it is less likely to be hacked and misused. You can choose to set up individual passkeys for multiple devices or use the same across devices from Apple for instance with iCloud backup enabled. You can also use an existing passkey from another device to sign into a new device temporarily.
“While passwords will still be around in the foreseeable future, this is an exciting step in the right direction. We are thrilled to be an early adopter of this new authentication method, helping to realise our vision for a more secure, passwordless internet,” Treadwell added.
Enrolling for passkeys is a fairly straightforward process. Just go into your Amazon account (on browser/iPhone for now, support for Android is coming soon), choose login & security, and add your passkey.
Amazon notes that passkeys support is “an important step in making the Amazon experience easier and safer for our customers” and that it will “continue to encourage customers to adopt passkeys and invite the industry to join us in creating a passwordless internet.”
Apple, Google and Microsoft are other tech giants advocating for a universal passwordless sign‑in option.
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