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Taus Noor

What is the future of passwords on the Internet?

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Where do you see passwords in the future? Do you think passwords will always be around? Or are we headed to a fully passwordless Internet/world? Bonus question: what kind of biometric auth do you feel most comfortable with? Full disclosure: I'm working on a product related to passwordless auth.
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Satyajit Manjaria
Hey, Yeah. I do think passwordless is going to be future. I myself have implemented in the SaaS product I am building. I believe it does add a layer of convenience and security for the end-user. For now, we have been using cotter.app is working very well for us. It provides magic links over mail, OTP via WhatsApp & SMS and biometric support. I hope this helps.
MO
@satyajit_manjaria Awesome! Could you share your Cotter implementation with us please? Excited to see it in action.
Asif Hassan
@satyajit_manjaria This is good insights, Satyajit! Sounds like you will prefer your machine knows your password 100% of the time!
Kevin Chandra
@satyajit_manjaria Hey Satyajit, thanks for the plug. Glad you're enjoying Cotter!
Taus Noor
@satyajit_manjaria @kevinchandra Love the UI/UX on Cotter! Lots to learn from for sure
Tarek Dajani
I don't know what other options are available, maybe fingerprint? I have no idea. From my end, I hate passwords, I always forget them. The question is will your product be working on all websites that need passwords?
Taus Noor
@tdajani That is the idea, yes. We are just launching our Beta soon on PH -- and it works on more or less any device (with or without biometric sensors). Excited to share more soon.
Asif Hassan
@tdajani This sounds like a great proposition!
Tarek Dajani
@gazeattaus Good to know. I'll definitely check it out when you do.
Tarek Dajani
@asif_hassan I am guessing you were talking to Taus :) . Thanks anyway from the both of us.
Yunus Ozcan
@tdajani Maybe 1Paswords or Lastpass take over the world.
chandan kumar
Fignerprint sensor is a very good example, I have been using it on MacBook Air and its very good
Aaron O'Leary
Good question! I think in the immediate future it might be Fast or something like it. But in the long term I could see face ID being widely adopted, every laptop and phone has a front facing camera so it makes sense and wouldn't be surprised if thats the route Apple push with Face ID. A face ID SDK would be awesome.
Aaron O'Leary
Furthermore to this I think Fast started the conversation on this but I believe passwords in the long run will take a dramatic pivot from where Fast is right now.
Taus Noor
@aaronoleary Apple/other large companies actually rarely use front camera for face ID -- in fact that's something my team and I working on. Liveness detection using a regular front camera is still a difficult problem (esp if you want a good UX). Apple did patent Face ID for laptops though -- so we can expect to see the same Face ID sensors from an iPhone on the MacBook at some point.
David Oh
As soon as we have a legal and regulatory framework that's not demanding for startups to follow and transparency with this process, I'm okay with any biometric authentication, as long as everyone follows the same rules. Such rules can be such as, 1) only hashes of the biometric data can be captured at any time so that we cannot ever have 'stolen' biometric data, 2) the hashing method itself much be random 3) to prove this, after a company reaches a specific size (10 million rev or 10,000 users), they must submit to random sampling inspections of their database and the codebase that pertains to the bio-authentication scheme. 4) the authentication systems themselves, whether fingerprint, palm, or retina, facial, cannot at a hardware-level capture the full features but only partials. This would be similar to PCI complliance.
Taus Noor
@davidoh This is awesome. FIDO might be trying to do something along these lines, not quite sure. You should definitely check them out!
girish wadhwani
@davidoh Most biometrics only capture partial features and store a "biometric hash". Even access to the hash is often protected by using a secure chip. Databases of biometrics are a no-no. They are a single point of attack and a very valuable target. Instead, biometrics are better stored on the client device (like a smartphone). This is a (much harder) distributed target. This is how FIDO works.
David Oh
@girish_w I know what the ideal is. That’s why I use my iPhone regularly with no doubts. I was talking about the api based system mentioned here. If biometrics are going to be used by everyone, it stands to reason many engineers will make the same mistakes again. Like at Facebook, when they stored passwords in plain text. And what seems to actually be the case with the majority of successful services we use, according to 1Password and password checkup on chrome. What was your point?
Arseniy
Passwords are a good memory exercise. Biometrics can be uncomfortable, and ID photos you obviously only trust to very few institutions.
Rick Firnando
I personally think that fully passwordless internet will be the next big thing on the internet, especially when you use AI (face recognition) to authenticate users. The biggest challenge is how you create a friendly and seamless user interface to entice users to use your solution.
Taus Noor
@firnando13 Yes, that is definitely the challenge. We're working on a few different ways of doing it. Also inspired by our friends at Cotter @kevinchandra (https://cotter.app) who are doing very interesting work on passwordless auth. You should def check them out (and also our solution when it launches on PH haha).
Melissa Kwan
I look forward to a passwordless internet world. Not remembering my passwords (given the number of different requirements companies require) and not being able to figure out password managers is the reason why I haven't moved to a new computer for the past 2 years. Nothing more frustrating than being locked out of an account because you can't remember the answer to your own secret question from high school, then being on hold for an hour so customer service to reset it. It's also the reason why I hate switching to new phones. I would love to see facial recognition work with all logins, not just phone apps. Whatever you're doing, please hurry.
Taus Noor
@melissa_kwan I know, right? We actually enable passwordless re-authentication on new device as well. We're providing our service as an API for developers, however -- so not targeted to consumers directly yet. Do subscribe to our upcoming page if you're interested: https://gaze.ai/ph
Fahim Al Wasi
Ironic how the future of passwords might be "password-less".
Tedel
I will quite likely stick to using passwords for the rest of my life. I do not trust anything biometric for two reasons: It is something you cannot share in an emergency (e.g. Sister! Someone just stole my mobile! Please, log into my account and change the password!); and it is something that may be used as a motivation to keep you close. For example, if you are ever unlucky enough to be kidnapped, and all you passcodes are biometric, they will not release you until you have unlocked for them everything they want.
Arseniy
@simplytedel definitely agree with the first point, the second is more nuanced and there's a whole debate to be had about it
Taus Noor
@simplytedel Sharing in an emergency is a very interesting point. However, if you use biometric as your password -- stealing your phone should not give anyone access to anything really, right? Since they'd still you to actually log in or do anything?
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