May 4, 2023
Google and other vendors recently announced that they are migrating to passkeys instead of passwords. Several commentators are up in arms about this change.
The question is not whether passkeys are good or bad. Passkeys are a tool. Using any tool comes with tradeoffs. It is our duty to make a rational choice given our own context.
Passwords have been the default security mechanism for computers for several decades. As a concept, they are easy to understand. In reality, they are very difficult to implement effectively. There are countless news stories about data breaches with millions of passwords being stolen from insecure sites causing billions of dollars of losses.
On the one hand, passkeys make large scale data theft less attractive to the criminals. On the other hand, when an individual loses their phone, their individual losses can be larger in that circumstance.
In this case, the goal is to reduce crime. The best way to do that is to raise healthy children who feel loved unconditionally by their parents and their society. The second best way to achieve the goal is to make it less economically viable than staying within the law. While passkeys have their downsides, they make large scale theft much more difficult.
I predict a net decrease in computer crime as a result of this change.