Google Chrome now supports passkeys for everyone

Continues push towards passwordless for Big Tech

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Passkeys, the latest biometric authentication standardlooking to replace passwords, is now available across stable versions ofGoogle Chromeon desktop and Android devices.

Announcing the release in aChromium blog post,Googlereasserted the common belief in tech circles that passwords are vulnerable to data leaks, phishing attacks, and simple passwords seeing heavy reuse in lieu of storing stronggenerated passwordsin apassword manager.

Going forward, passkeys in Chrome on Android will be synced via Google Password Manager, or other password managers that support them.

The future of passkeys

Passkeys sit alongside other security principles that either compliment passwords or do away with them completely such asZero Trust, which also includesmulti-factor authentication. They’re already available oniPhonesand iPads, havingstarted lifeintegrated into iOS.

And just like the iOS integration, Google Chrome will allow you to use passkeys stored on nearby mobile devices with login requests on desktop devices.

In its announcement blog post, Google claimed this is possible due to passkeys being developed according to “industry standards” developed alongside theFIDO AllianceandW3C, although it didn’t elaborate further.

Chrome 108 marks the first appearance of passkeys in a stable release, but, asTechRadar Proreportedat the time,  passkeys havebeen available since October 2022in Chrome Canary, the company’s experimental version of the browser designed for programmers and bleeding edge enthusiasts.

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TechRadar Prohas recently reported that both1PasswordandBitwardenare making the jump to the new standard, without phasing out passwords completely.

A large part of the appeal of passkeys is control. Being able to easily track the passkeys for your user accounts is important, for the same reason thatpassword managershave grown in popularity in recent years: it ensures that users are capable of remaining secure online without needing to be able to easily recall their authentication credentials.

To that end, all of your passkeys can now be viewed and sorted through on Chrome forWindowsand macOS.

What is Passkey?>PayPal is doing away with passwords for some users>Check out our list of the best identity theft protection right now

As we’ve also noted extensively before, passkeys will take time to bed in as the dominant authentication method online.

Web developers must implement passkey creation manually, and although many may not currently see the urgency of doing so, the recent conscious push from several tech companies to support passkey storage may turn the tide come 2023 and beyond.

Luke Hughes holds the role of Staff Writer at TechRadar Pro, producing news, features and deals content across topics ranging from computing to cloud services, cybersecurity, data privacy and business software.

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