Yahoo is eliminating passwords completely

By Trevor Mogg Published March 16, 2015

Be honest, how well organized are you with your passwords? Do you have a different one for each of your online accounts? Or do you use the same one for all of them, something like ‘password12345‘, perhaps?

With tech firms pushing us to hold more and more personal data in the cloud, and a seemingly growing army of hackers doing their level best to get hold of it, online security is more important than ever. Two-step authentication goes some way to improving the situation, but many people don’t bother setting it up.

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While for many Web users passwords are still as much of a hassle as they ever were, Yahoo wants to change that. Its recently announced solution is an on-demand system where a unique password is sent to your handset each time you want to log in to your account. In other words, you don’t need to remember a thing.

It only takes a moment to set up, and here’s what to do:

First, sign in to your Yahoo account
Click on your name top right to visit your account information page
Click ‘security’ in the left bar
Click the ‘on-demand passwords’ slider to opt in
Enter your handset number and wait for Yahoo to send a verification code
Enter the code and you’re all set

The next time you go to sign in to your Yahoo account, you’ll receive a single-use four-character password to your phone. If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like two-step authentication without the first step, you’d be right.

While it seems like a convenient solution for anyone who has a hard time remembering passwords, you’ll have to make certain your handset is close by at all times, and you definitely wouldn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.

Yahoo’s is one of an increasing number of solutions offered by firms exploring ways of helping people log in to their accounts more easily, with the main challenge being finding a system that balances security and convenience.

Yahoo’s on-demand passwords are currently available for U.S.-based users only, but hopefully the system will soon be rolled out to those in other countries, too.

[Source: Yahoo]

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Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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