Passwords suck. They're hard to remember, annyoing to forget, dangerous to store, and a magnet for hackers and scammers. That's why I use them as little as possible in favor of Apple's Keychain technology, which creates and stores hard-to-guess passwords.
But Facebook could make all of that go away.
Today at F8, Facebook's developer conference, the company announced an update to something with a very ordinary name but significantly revolutionary capabilities: Delegated Account Recovery.
Essentially, it's a way to regain access to services after you've forgotten your password or lost your phone.
Crucially, it spans both web and apps.
Apple has a solution for passwords. Google has a password manager. Microsoft has a password manager. Intel bought a password manager three years ago, in 2014. And numerous independent password manager solutions exist, including 1Password and Dashlane.
But none has the reach of Facebook, with almost two billion monthly active users.
And most solutions are for the easily-connected web. They're much more challenged to connect easily-siloed apps.
For example, in spite of the fact that Apple created the device, the on-device software, the App Store, and the cloud technology that ties it all together, Apple's Keychain technology cannot auto-fill a password for me in an app, even when I'm logged into the same company's website on my iPhone.
Of course, this is password recovery, not password provisioning. At the moment, Facebook is not building a service that will auto-log you into all of your accounts.
Yet.
The social media giant scarcely needs to, however. Many sites and apps use Facebook social login as one of their default options already.
Connecting the two seems like a strong possibility down the road.
