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.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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
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It's an immediate red flag for me.
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.