Was reading about Google’s new passkey options, and another article from News & Insights that was talking about not letting employees make their own passwords, and was wondering what you guys think. Are we headed towards the no-password-needed future, or are passwords going to be around forever?
If you think they are here to stay, then I’d love to hear what you think about complexity and length and whether they need to be memorable, or just stored in a password keeper.
If you don’t think they are here to stay, what do you think will replace them? Is Google on the right track with passkeys, or will it be something biometric that an AI can’t fake (definitely not voice or face for instance), or something else I haven’t considered?
Feel free to vote in the poll below, and let me know what you think in the comments. And, happy password day, whether they are dying out or not. 
Are Passwords Becoming Obsolete?
- Yes, passwords are becoming obsolete
- Somewhat, but we will always need them in certain areas
- No, passwords are here to stay
- Other, tell us below
51 Spice ups
I feel like passwords are so iconic that they’ll be needed in the future, but passwordless is more secure and will most likely become the norm in days to come.
Happy World Password Day!
4 Spice ups
Although passwords are more “hidden” now, behind biometrics etc, there is, and IMO will always be some sort of password (or passphrase etc) in the background that the biometrics relates to. Wether we generate manually those or not is debatable, but it will always be there in some form.
8 Spice ups
No, we will be forever cursed with passwords until everyone has an ID chip implant that is unmodifiable from outside.
7 Spice ups
Perhaps biometrics will one day replace passwords. But the interfaces are still very complex and implementation in all systems where we use PINs or passwords will take some time.
3 Spice ups
How can we have World Password Day if passwords become obsolete?
What will we celebrate on this day each year if passwords go away?!?
I guess we could always celebrate this instead:
13 Spice ups
We should celebrate that one anyway, whether we celebrate passwords or not.
6 Spice ups
I wish they would become obsolete I get so tired of them.
3 Spice ups
Passwords are here to stay, but biometrics are obsolete. Because it’s too painful to change them after a security breach.
6 Spice ups
jeffnoel
(ghijkmnop)
10
It would be nice to see passwords go away, taking with them the corporate policies of changing them every few months, leading to the inevitable calls to the helpdesk because somebody saved their password in an enterprise app, or didn’t log off a remote resource, or their wireless device is using their old password for the company wifi network.
5 Spice ups
test4echo
(Test4Echo)
11
No, I don’t believe that passwords will ever true disappear, because they are still the simplest way to get into a website, they are ubiquitous and cover instances that passkeys cannot (losing phone, not having a phone, not having a biometrically enabled device, full stop), and they are honestly the only truly private and secure way to protect data. That last point assumes you can make a secure password, but passwords are the only thing that courts cannot force you to use to unlock devices. The classic example being that police in the US, as far as I recall, are able to force you to unlock anything that’s biometric, and they certainly could do that simply by overpowering you and placing your finger/thumb on the fingerprint scanner or your face in front of the phone; but they cannot force you to enter in your password or passcode to your phone.
I’d like to keep that level of security, as much as I would never want to use it. However, I do hold that people should use a password manager and therefore only have to remember one strong, long, and complex pass phrase for getting into that password manager, with multiple MFA factors set up for it. That will at least keep all other passwords to websites entirely random and unguessable.
11 Spice ups
Having used a password for 30 years I am ready for them to go. I forget my passwords all the time, so I am constantly resetting them. I am staying one step ahead of the game. lol
4 Spice ups
I’d love to go passwordless, but I do see them sticking around in some areas, for example on printers for scan to email/shared folder. Would help if more companies made it easier, or in some cases possible at all, to move beyond passwords.
3 Spice ups
Passwords will be around for a while, as different authentication methods are slow in adoption. Even if there is another way, passwords will still be a fallback. Now if we could just convince everyone to make them more secure.
2 Spice ups
We are still using Windows XP in bank teller machines so I would say no
4 Spice ups
MFA. Passwords will always be an important piece of the equation. They should be long and memorable. Change requirements can be relaxed on many things if they are long enough, like a sentence. I use passwords that are over 40 characters long when the system allows me to.
3 Spice ups
First, May the 4th Be With Everyone! Passwords are never going away so we need to make sure we always are up to date with consistently good password hygiene. We have a thread going on our most creative Star Wars password ideas. Also please enjoy this sick meme we created to celebrate the two holidays!
6 Spice ups
Slava
(Slava)
18
We’ve not been able to get users to get rid of “Password123” for decades, how are we going to get them to move forward?
2 Spice ups
I wonder how you could hack into Darth Vader’s suit. Does he have his own personal Wi-Fi network?
5 Spice ups
Mike400
(Mike400)
20
Passwords are here to stay. They’ll be supplemented in many ways by other means of verification, but at the heart of all these systems that supplement passwords is still a password.
4 Spice ups
