Yahoo moved to kill passwords Thursday with what it is calling the Yahoo Account Key, which will use "push notifications" to provide users access to its email rather than a traditional password.
Dylan Casey, Yahoo's
vice president of product management, said on the company's Tumblr.com page that the process to become password-free started earlier this year with "on-demand passwords," where users sign onto their accounts using SMS codes.
"Passwords are usually simple to hack and easy to forget," Casey stated the blog. "Account Key streamlines the sign-in process with a secure, elegant, and easy-to-use interface that makes access as easy as tapping a button. It's also more secure than a traditional password because once you activate Account Key — even if someone gets access to your account info — they can't sign in."
The Verge reported that the"account key" will work with the aid of a mobile device. When a user logs into his or her Yahoo Mail account and enters their email address, Yahoo will recognize the account and, through a push-enabled feature, send a notification to the mobile device.
From there, the user can approve or deny the login directly from the notification.
"It's part of a broad redesign of Yahoo Mail designed to make the service faster and easier to search, and also lets you use the app with accounts from Outlook, Hotmail, and AOL for the first time," The Verge's Casey Newton wrote.
"Account Key resolves a number of common problems with passwords: that you forget them; that you reuse them for multiple services, making you more vulnerable when one of those services inevitably is hacked; that you don't have a second method of authentication in case someone else ever gets their hands on your password," Newton continued.
Matt O'Brien,
who writes the San Jose Mercury News' Silicon Beat blog, said the password change is part of a lighter approach Yahoo is using, compared to its revamping in 2013 that rattled many users.
Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer sent out a Twitter post Thursday supporting the changes.