What would we lose if passwords disappeared?

In 2004 Bill Gates told a security conference, “There is no doubt that over time, people are going to rely less and less on passwords.” More than twenty years on, they are still here. In 2012 a team of researchers scored proposed replacements against twenty-five benefits and found that none kept everything passwords already offer: they are free, work everywhere, and need no hardware.

Passkeys may finally manage it. Apple, Google, and Microsoft committed to them in 2022: your device keeps a private key, the website keeps only a public one, and there is no shared secret to type, leak, or guess. Getting back in depends on your devices instead of your memory. By 2026, at fifteen large services including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, more than a third of sign-ins used a passkey, and new Microsoft accounts no longer come with a password at all.

Still, the old habit is holding on. In a 2024 survey, half of American adults said they keep their passwords in their heads, more than in the two years before, and only about a third used a password manager. If passkeys win, something small goes with the password: the one daily moment when many of us typed something that mattered to us.