Delete your Microsoft password. You won’t need it anymore

If you have a Microsoft account, you may soon not have to go through the bother of remembering its password.

That’s because the company is ditching passwords and instead allowing the use of fingerprints, facial recognition, authenticator apps, Windows Hello, a security key, or an SMS/mail verification code to log in.

Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Security, Compliance and Identity at Microsoft, tweeted that passwords are easy targets for hackers. “Nobody likes passwords. They’re inconvenient,” she said.

“Passwordless authentication is one of the simplest and most effective tools available to protect your accounts. We’re proud to lead the way to a safer, passwordless future,” she tweeted. “Using Microsoft Authenticator you can remove the password from your account completely, making for more secure and convenient login.”

The new method – starting this week – will enable users to sign in to services such as Outlook, OneDrive, Microsoft Family Safety, and even Xbox Series X/S without a password but give them the choice to visit the Additional Security Options section to add a password again if they wish to do so.

Mirosoft began offering passwordless sign-in for commercial accounts in March, while Google, Apple and others are also working towards passwordless logins.

In a blog post, Microsoft offered itself is a test case, saying “nearly 100 per cent of our employees use passwordless options to log in to their corporate accounts”, also pointing out that in a recent Microsoft Twitter poll, one in five people reported they would rather accidentally “reply all” – which can be monumentally embarrassing – than reset a password.

It further made a case against passwords by saying: “One of our recent surveys found that 15 percent of people use their pets’ names for password inspiration. Other common answers included family names and important dates like birthdays. We also found 1 in 10 people admitted reusing passwords across sites, and 40 percent say they’ve used a formula for their passwords, like Fall2021, which eventually becomes Winter2021 or Spring2022,” and that “hackers don’t break in, they log in.”

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