Amazon has joined the recent trend of big tech firms offering passwordless logins for its customers.
The retail giant is rolling out support for passkeys on its website and apps, meaning customers won’t need to enter their password to login. Instead, all they need to do is authenticate their access with whatever they use to lock their smart device, such as their fingerprint, face, or PIN.
The private portion of the passkey is stored on your device cryptographically, but it can be used across your other devices too thanks to cloud syncing. The keys are generated automatically, so there is no need for you to create or remember any codes.
The passkey takeover
What’s more, they are also considered safer than passwords for this reason. Since no one knows what the private keys are – not even the user – they can’t be phished by cybercriminals.
Users of Amazon’s apps on iPhone can enable passkeys by navigating to Your Account – Login and Security – Set Up For Passkeys. Android users, it seems, will have to wait to use passkeys on their devices, as Amazon said they will be available to them soon.
It was only a matter of time before Amazon joined Apple, Google, and Microsoft by offering passkey support. Like the others, Amazon is a board-level member of the FIDO Alliance, the association that sets the technological standards for passkeys.
It is not surprising, therefore, that these are the most prominent services to have adopted passkeys so far. Only a handful of others outside their circle have done the same, including BestBuy, eBay, and PayPal.
More and more have been getting on board in recent months, however. LinkedIn and X are gearing up to offer them to their users, as is WhatsApp. But although many are enthusiastic about a passwordless future, some believe that passwords will still be with us for a while.
Passwords are quite often the weak link in the chain, though, and they are a prime target for threat actors to extract by various means, from phishing campaigns to malware and infostealer installations. It is hoped that passkeys will put an end to such attacks.
