The average person can recite between 5-12 online account passwords from memory, without resorting to stored records of them or resetting them.
When this happens every single time, you know you have a memory problem, or far too many accounts.
Yahoo! wants to get rid of account passwords altogether, and allows for “on-demand” access of your account.
How does this work?
One has to link a cell phone with their account, and enable the “on-demand” option for account access; the system sends an SMS to their cell phone every time they need to log on.
Considering how the well-rounded security expert, Alex Stamos is the Information Security VP at Yahoo!, this method sounds rather simplistic and borderline insecure. What happens if your cell phone is stolen, or unlawfully accessed?
We aren’t too fond of this method, and hopefully it won’t become the de facto method of accessing accounts in the future.
