Dorchester — Apr 9th 2024

Mick introduced us to PassKeys explaining the secure technology behind how they operate using un-hackable public and private keys with no password i.e. very secure without the hassle of remembering and recording passwords. The Passkey will still be shown as present in Passwords Keychain and that has to be turned on for for PassKeys to work including sharing across all devices logged in to the same Apple ID. Passkeys are a very new standard and only the larger websites like Apple, Google, Amazon and a few others still offer to option over using a password.

Mick was disappointed to discover that you cannot delete the password option if already set up for a site. He had demonstrated this to David M who showed how, having set up a PassKey for PayPal and deleted the password from his system he could still log in to PayPal using the password, so anyone else could do the same or, more importantly, a hacker can still steal a password from a website. David also showed, what he considers the benefits of using Apples built in password system and how verification codes can be automatically created or entered and the carrying message deleted after use.

Mick’s talk sparked off a very lively Q&A and discussion.

Trevor C made a very strong case in favour of 1Password which Mick also uses. Using similar arguments Trevor made for 1Password, Georgia made for Lastpass. In both cases, a key feature is legacy contacts having access to passwords, credit cards etc. We should look at this in the future together with Apple’s procedure for setting up a legacy contact.

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