this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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Privacy
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It's far from that and bad analogies pollute otherwise very simple conversations. If you want a more apt analogy, this "debate" is shaping up closer to LED vs incandescent bulbs.
It's easy to say passwords are sufficient when you're one person practicing good op-sec. It's not when you're supporting thousands of people of varying technical proficiency, thousands of machines, thousands of services, and thousands of bad-actors. It was an even simpler time when 4 digit PINs were "sufficient", but the world you and I live in is more complicated. Certain passkeys are transferable, so you're not even losing out on that capability. Curmudgeon arguments aren't convincing. Passkeys aren't "giving power away". Using passkeys doesn't mean your giving up freedom. Passkeys have no bearing on the "economic system" and inflation. As far as the IT ecosystem is concerned, we've never lived in a more open and capable time. There are so many alternatives to every service (that isn't tightly coupled to copyright). Of course companies are trying to offer unique products people can't get anywhere else. None of this has to do with passkeys.
Here’s what I don’t get. When I posted this, you were posting every 10 minutes at most defending passkeys. How do you have so much energy and time to defend them so vehemently? Are you heavily invested in a passkey business? Are you an LLM that’s been instructed to defend LLMs at all costs?
I’m not sure the latter is possible since you wrote a large paragraph starting with “it’s easy to say passwords are sufficient” when that has absolutely nothing to do with my opinion on passwords. I suspect an LLM would’ve stuck a little closer to my own words.
No, I'm just a professional software engineer that has been in security and privacy for the last ~9 years (unrelated to passkeys). But I am also head of security for my company and rolled out updated hardware keys in the last year, so am somewhat more familiar with the topic as of recent.
I also generally enjoy discussing privacy topics. Even more so when I feel the community's understanding is off /shrug. Was chilling on my phone while the kids were crashed this afternoon.