Either by sending a code to SMS or Email, you are able to sign into your account without ever needing to or being able to add a password. Why has this become a thing recently?
From my experience things like this are not important services. they are things where I keep the password in an online password service which I won’t do for anything important.
Can’t be liable for theft if there were no locks?
well, in case of sending an email with a temporary access code it’s not different than using the “forgot password” link
Too many big password breaches also occurred to me.
But that’s what MFA is there for, although they shouldn’t be using SMS as one of the possible factors - let alone the main one, as seems to be the case.
Yeah but your password on my product with MFA is probably used everywhere else without MFA. Most products have a low risk security profile so they don’t want to be the leak for higher risk stuff.
Side rant:
To make it worse, SMS is incredibly insecure. Nothing should send you codes via SMS, and if you have the option to use an authenticator app, do that. It’s atrocious so many banks only have SMS as an option.
The really dumb part is, the SMS codes are literally the same authenticator algorithm, but running on their servers and sent to you via an insecure medium.
And one little lapse in not paying a cell phone bill can cause you to lose your phone number, which then means you can no longer authenticate.
this is why I don’t like it and why I often advocate that countries should provide a secure email that you can come to an office in person if you can’t get to it. People get mad as if Im suggesting it should be the only email they have but what I really want is a guaranteed thing that is made as secure as possible and allows for real in person support to make sure you can get access or stop someone that somehow got access.
This shit drives me nuts. I’ve put in a lot of effort to secure my accounts but a number of them require SMS without any opt out. We have known about the risks of SMS plenty long enough at this point.
its also very inconvenient if you are outside of the country and dont want to pay for roaming. Cellphone providers should offer a way to forward sms messages to an email address, their own webpage or an app.
To make it worse, SMS is incredibly insecure. Nothing should send you codes via SMS
Theoretically sure, but the chances of anyone getting their SMS hacked and their 2FA code being used to compromise their account is so infinitesimally small that it’s not even worth mentioning.
I never understood why SMS is insecure, are you saying it’s easy to intercept someone’s number? How would that even work without the SIM?
It’s all just a big “in theory” really. It’s “insecure” in that if someone knows the telco you are with, and the telco that you’re with doesn’t follow procedures to verify that a caller is who they say they are, you could have someone else steal your phone number by getting a replacement sim card sent to them.
In reality it’s nothing to worry about. Like…at all. Every telco I’ve been with sends you a sms to confirm that you requested a new SIM card, and that’s after they’ve confirmed that you are who you say you are via sending you a code on your phone number or email.
Getting a replacement SIM from the phone company is often shockingly easy, just a tiny bit of social engineering. And then you have access to the number and everything that 2FA “protects”
Veritasium did a great video on it. Anything I can say about it will be 10x worse than that video.
The most common way is basically calling up your phone company and pretending to be you saying you needed to switch phones
But also beyond just that the networks that route calls and texts globally are not very secure… and it’s not as hard as it should be to get access to it.
It is but only if you are targeted. I completely disagree with people who say it’s insecure because most attacks are remote and in bulk. Which your password they can login from any browser but are stopped by the SMS code.
For the SMS code they can use mostly automated social engineering to trick a certain percentage into giving it up.
However while A SIM attack may be easy enough for a targeted individual, I don’t think it scales: they have to do work that only helps with one user. It’s too “expensive” compared to automated social engineering against a million vulnerable users
Because people don’t realize how ridiculously insecure SMS and (usually unencrypted) email are.
It’s just kids who never had a mentor.
It is coding for the lowest common denominator of user – those who use the same easily-guessable password for everything. Making them click a link to login is honestly better security.
Of course there should be an option for those of us who have a TOTP app and use a password manager.
Can’t brain today, I have the dumb. What’s TOTP, other than that BBC show?
Time based one time passwords. Those (usually) six digit codes which get replaced every 30 seconds or so. During setup you copied the secret to your device (usually smartphone) and now your device and the server you authenticate at can calculate the same secret code every thirty seconds.
Which reminds me: I just got a new phone and totally forgot about Authenticator apps
I was able to recover one but the other is lost and I still need to get those accounts reset
Adding a shameless plug here: Aegis is available on f-droid and allows you to backup your 2FA secrets on your own server (e.g. own nextcloud) in case you don’t trust the default Google authenticator.
I’m due to rebuild my lab this winter so I’ll make sure to take a look
I’m due to rebuild my lab this winter…
Famous last words before emerging 3 years later.
Accompanied by “I can stop any time I want” when buying another domain.
Outsourcing the securiry risk to a third-party
Yup. “That’s not on me! Your email was compromised! That’s between your email provider and you!”
It’s an immediate red flag for me.
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I think to reduce friction for gaining new users.
gg ez ease of use feature, which is hilarious because that’s exactly where smishing attacks come in. People are actually more willing to give out the OTP than their actual password, so it definitely less secure.
I think this started out as a decently good idea, like sign in with a device type of feature (think QR code from an authenticated device), but then along the way someone just went “screw it” and changed it to an OTP.
Even in 2025 password managers are rare, people still reuse the same 8 character password everywhere, and people fall for low effort scams. So someone thought “if they’re gonna be insecure anyway, lets just make it so they never have to use a password and sync it to their phone or email”.
Because passwordless authentication is awesome and needs to be the standard. It’s basically just skipping the password and going straight to 2FA, which is the main security behind any account that you’ve got 2FA on.
If you skip the password then you’re back down to just 1FA, it just happens to be the factor that used to be second.
Technically the truth, but an argument can be made that 2FA was mostly more secure by virtue of how bad password security is, and selling a switch to passkey as a convenience is a big security win.
Also with passkey, you’ll be commonly be forced to do some sort of device unlock making it generally the “thing you have” require either “thing you are” or “thing you know” so it becomes effectively 2fa.
Yeah, password on its own is weak. Any factor + password will always be a lot more secure than password alone OR the other factor alone, but pairing stronger factors of course results in stronger pairings.
Passkey is a device check (the key lives on your device and nowhere else), so it relies on your device security, even if it’s just a PIN…and there has to be a backup option in case you lose access to that device, in which case the account only ends up as secure as that authentication method…which hopefully isn’t password alone.
Though passkeys are now commonly shared across devices. That was one of the changes they made. For example, chrome will gladly do all the passkey management in the Google password manager. Under Linux at least there’s isn’t even a whiff of trying to integrate with a hardware security device. First pass they demanded either a USB device or Bluetooth connection to a phone doing it credibly, or windows hello under windows, but now they decided to open it up.
Yeh but with 2FA the password is essentially irrelevant because no one other than you can get in even if they have your password, so why not just skip it?
What downsides are there to passwordless authentication in your mind?
Because the password still needs to be correct. What if the thief has your phone but no password
If a thief already has your phone unlocked then nothing else matters, you’re fucked and all your accounts are compromised.
There’s lots of factors for everything isn’t there. If a thief has your phone unlocked then yes you’re pretty much knackered
There’s no other factors when a thief already has your phone unlocked, which is why it’s a bad point to use against passworldess authentication in this argument.
Password reset?
But they don’t have access to your email in this instance.
If the thief has your email and password and phone then you’re SOL
If they don’t have email access, why is a passwordless magic link sent to an email bad then?
The tech “enthusiasts” of Lemmy are really showing their arses in here lol. They have a “I took 2 semesters of computer science so I’m somewhat of an expert” level of understanding and mentality.
There’s a reason most big tech companies are starting to move to passwordless logins. If 2FA is the ultimate protection about unauthorised access, the password is ultimately irrelevant - and given all we know about password reuse and data breaches, getting rid of them is a good thing.
If they’ve got your phone with your 2FA they’ve also got your email on your phone lol
I’m not defending passwords specifically. You could do better 2FA with email + biometrics, although of course device authentication is only as secure as the device itself—but that’s entirely beside the point, which is that there must be two factors if you’re going to call something two factor authentication.
Passwordless isn’t 2FA……it’s passwordless. I’m not calling it 2FA.
I see that the comment I initially replied to has been edited, but it still reads as though the second factor of 2FA is itself 2FA:
Because passwordless authentication is awesome and needs to be the standard. It’s basically just skipping the password and going straight to 2FA, which is the main security behind any account that you’ve got 2FA on.
2FA stands for two-factor authentication. The typical case you’re describing:
Factor 1: password Factor 2: device check, usually
That second step of device verification itself isn’t 2FA, it’s only the second factor of that particular 2FA, and the reason your account is more secure behind it isn’t because it’s a device check but because it’s a second factor. There’s not really a “main” security check in 2FA because having two is the whole point.
I do have thoughts about passwordless as a standalone security measure, but that’s not at all what I’m addressing here. I will add, however, that since passwordless can only ever be as strong as the security on your email account…it might seem like enough if your email is protected by 2FA—but not if you mistakenly leave your email logged in on a device someone else has access to, which may sound stupid but it definitely happens.
I see that the comment I initially replied to has been edited, but it still reads as though the second factor of 2FA is itself 2FA:
Sorry but that’s just you misinterpreting it. I was explaining what passwordless authentication is like compared to the current password+2FA system, in which passwordless is basically just going straight to the 2FA, not that passwordless is 2FA. You don’t need to explain 2FA to me, I very much know what it is lol
it might seem like enough if your email is protected by 2FA—but not if you mistakenly leave your email logged in on a device someone else has access to, which may sound stupid but it definitely happens.
This is the worst argument that people keep coming back to. If you have left your email logged in on a device that someone else has access to, you’ve been compromised. You don’t use that as an argument against other services.
Also passwordless isn’t only authenticated by email. It’s usually done via an authenticator app.
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i have no proof, but im semi sure that this way you cannot sign up with a temp mail or temp sms, so you are kinda forced to use your real data, which means the site is selling your data
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Just use temporary email addresses. Fastmail generates them for free with a button click, and doesnt share your real email.
I hate the SMS ones, because I don’t have a good phone signal in my home, so I have to ruin around trying to get a couple of bars so I can get the effing code. My banking app just uses a fingerprint.
Check out if your router and provider supports SIP. It allows sms and calls over your wifi connection
No, is the answer. Moving to another ISP when my plan runs out. I’m paying extra for a VoIP line and want to move to WiFi calling.
Which services? I haven’t stumbled upon a single one
