{"id":49515,"date":"2023-11-03T10:49:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T14:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=49515"},"modified":"2023-11-03T10:49:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T14:49:20","slug":"how-to-set-up-passkeys-in-google-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/how-to-set-up-passkeys-in-google-account\/49515\/","title":{"rendered":"Passkeys for your Google account: what, where, how, and why"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google recently announced that it\u2019s planning on making so-called \u201cpasskeys\u201d the default option for logging into Google accounts<\/a>. So, the next time you sign in to YouTube, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, or any other app from the search giant, you\u2019ll most likely be prompted to create such a passkey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this post, we discuss where you can set up passkeys for your Google account, what options are available, and what to do if you encounter difficulties. But first, let\u2019s talk about what this technology actually is and how it works.<\/p>\n

What are passkeys?<\/h2>\n

Passkeys (a combination of \u201cpass\u201d + \u201ckey\u201d) are developed<\/a> by the FIDO Alliance, an organization with a mission to create new authentication standards that will eventually reduce humanity\u2019s reliance on passwords. If you have a hardware access key \u2014 often called a YubiKey (as the most popular brand) \u2014 you\u2019re already familiar with one of the FIDO Alliance\u2019s developments.<\/p>\n

Passkeys are the next stage in the evolution of new authentication technologies. Previous FIDO Alliance developments focused on additional authentication factors \u2014 secondary login verification options working in conjunction with universally hated passwords. Passkeys, on the other hand, are designed not to supplement but to entirely replace passwords<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The major tech giants \u2014 Apple, Google, and Microsoft \u2014 have already integrated support for this technology into their infrastructure and are ready to allow users to abandon passwords. In fact, Google is planning on encouraging users to do so<\/a> in the near future.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the FIDO Alliance didn\u2019t provide a standard translation for the term \u201cpasskey\u201d from English to any other language. Therefore, companies implementing this authentication mechanism can call it whatever they want, without much regard for their peers. \u0410 common term has not yet been chosen in French, Portuguese, or even Spanish.<\/p>\n

\"Passkeys,<\/a>

How Apple, Google, and Microsoft name passkeys in different languages<\/p><\/div>\n

How passkeys work and why all this is needed<\/h2>\n

Passkeys completely replace passwords, eliminating the need to create or remember sequences of characters.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it works. When a user registers a passkey on a service, a pair of related encryption keys is created \u2014 a private key and a public key. This is called public-key cryptography<\/a>. The basic idea is that if you encrypt something with the public key, it can only be decrypted with the private key.<\/p>\n

So, the private key stays on the user\u2019s device, while the public key is sent to the service. These two keys are then used to encrypt the dialog that occurs when a user logs in to the service:<\/p>\n