this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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Privacy
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Imagine if a romantic partner said "I will send you a unique string, probably exactly 8 characters" to verify that I am your partner. You would laugh and remind them it takes less than a second to generate every 8 character combination possible.
Instead, your SO makes a key and keeps it with them at all times, and you promise to talk to them using a machine that makes secret messages only their key can decipher. For fun, they give you a key and make a machine too... Explaining this shit is complicated I'm sorry for what you're about to read.
They send "heyy", You send "whatup", They send "send pics", You take one, encrypt and send the pic, They say "huh? Wtf?", You remind them about the secret key, They have no idea what you're talking about -fail OR they send something in return back (which you decrypt) -success
That's basically the same thing as authentication with a passkey oversimplified and only slightly wrong but good enough. There's shitloads of devices that do it, yubikeys, authenticator apps, but they're all doing that.