Tech giants want to kill off passwords. Here's why they think passkeys will change the world, and what that means for you

Last year, a password management company and a group of researchers found that the most common password in the world was 123456 — they said it showed up more than 103 million times. Here are some of the main issues with passwords: simple ones can be easily guessed data leaks can lead to passwords being bought and sold by cyber criminals passwords are often reused by the same person on different services and devices by the same person on different services and devices scammers can use social engineering or phishing to get someone to reveal a password "Our behaviours with passwords haven't changed much in the last decade," said Paul Haskell-Dowland, a professor of cyber security at Edith Cowan University. Here's how you could expect it to work: instead of creating a password, your device will use biometrics to verify it's you, then generate a private passkey and store it securely on your device — it will then sync with your other devices through the cloud to verify it's you, then generate a private passkey and — it will then sync with your other devices through the cloud when you next go to log in, Instagram will send a unique mathematical problem to your device to your device the device scans your biometrics to verify it's you and it then uses the passkey it has stored to complete the mathematical problem and sends the result back to Instagram back to Instagram if the result matches what Instagram is looking for, this verifies it's you and you're logged in and you're logged in if you try to sign in to your account on someone else's device, a QR code will be displayed so that you can scan it with one of your devices and confirm it's you. "You could consider it to be a bit like a password, but it's a password that never leaves your device," Professor Haskell-Dowland said. Here are some of the key benefits of passkeys: you don't have to remember a bunch of passwords a bunch of passwords there won't be anything to steal in data breaches from apps and websites, as they don't store your personal passkeys in data breaches from apps and websites, as they don't store your personal passkeys If someone steals your device, they still won't have your biometrics you can't be tricked into sharing a passkey, because you don't know what it is, because you don't know what it is passkeys are encrypted so no one can read them so no one can read them you can share passkeys with other people you trust, if you want to with other people you trust, if you want to eventually you'll likely be able to sign in to apps and services on nearly any device, regardless of their platform or browser.