Why am I being asked for a Passkey? How do I turn off passkeys?

I have a circular issue with the passkey requirement. I tried to sign into my amazon account today and suddenly, across all browsers and without any warning, I can't access any of my online accounts without a passkey. I hate these kinds of nazi-like tactics but fine, I need to order a winter hat so fine. I follow the link you provided, create a passkey and, lo and behold, amazon won't accept the passkey forced upon me by windows. The solution is to log into amazon to create a passkey they recognize, but, once again, I've been logged out of the account without warning and without my participation and consent. So now, I have no solution to this issue. All of the browsers I use are requiring this passkey. But the passkey isn't working. Thanks google. I swear you people are trained in the 7th circle of hell and nothing makes you people happier than tormenting the hapless victims of your insanity.

Jenafire Jem,

If you'd read my posts on the second page of this thread, you'd have seen that I don't consider Amazon's implementation of these passkeys either reasonable or functional, so you might have avoided creating that particular passkey altogether. Note that you replied to my early post in July, before I'd had the chance to see what other types of problems those in this and many other threads here are having using passkeys, after which I stopped recommending people with Windows 10 use them altogether and really started suggesting that most people should wait for Microsoft, Google and others work out the bugs with more experienced users first.

In your particular case, I recommend that you instead go directly to Amazon to try and get some aid in regaining access to your account, since though those here can help with Microsoft and to a small extent using your phone with passkeys, the finger-pointing and confusion caused by the inconsistent visual interfaces these various companies are using with passkeys are what's truly causing these problems.

If you do want to try and get help here with your Amazon passkey issues, then you should start your own thread and describe the specific issues with your Amazon account completely, since adding your post in this old thread both won't get it noticed by others and really just adds to the confusion over what your particular issues might be.

Rob

I have a circular issue with the passkey requirement. I tried to sign into my amazon account today and suddenly, across all browsers and without any warning, I can't access any of my online accounts without a passkey. I hate these kinds of nazi-like tactics but fine, I need to order a winter hat so fine. I follow the link you provided, create a passkey and, lo and behold, amazon won't accept the passkey forced upon me by windows. The solution is to log into amazon to create a passkey they recognize, but, once again, I've been logged out of the account without warning and without my participation and consent. So now, I have no solution to this issue. All of the browsers I use are requiring this passkey. But the passkey isn't working. Thanks google. I swear you people are trained in the 7th circle of hell and nothing makes you people happier than tormenting the hapless victims of your insanity.

This is a really really bad take. I would suggest to do something research on the negative aspects of key passes and how they are not better than passwords. They are just another option that is trying to do the same thing. The bigger issue is this feel more like a c-suite idea which gained some traction and now IT is trying to salvage it from being a very bad idea. To say insecure passwords are better than biometrics is something that I suggest you actually research into how they can be circumvented before you get pwned.

Cmoney619,

You should probably read all of my posts in this thread before responding, since I have noted in later posts that there are problems, especially when Windows 10 is involved, since the inconsistent methods used by both 3rd-party websites and in some cases even Microsoft itself to display passkey prompts or perform management cause their own confusion and difficulties that the typical consumer often can't resolve.

There has been a lot of work put into the passkey system, since it's the first attempt I've seen at making a public key cryptography system work on a global scale, with support by and for virtually every organization including governments and their websites regardless of who's physical platform or operating system is being used.

The problem with public key cryptography is that it's highly complex, so coming up with a way to make it possible for your everyday consumer to use and manage these keys was never going to be easy, and the initial attempts to rollout the FIDO2 Passkey system to users is definitely showing that it's not all going to work seamlessly.

It's not the passkeys themselves that are the bad idea, it's the typical issue of too many ways to do the same thing that's unnecessarily confusing, while for Microsoft I think the biggest problem is that people just need a simple way to use and manage these on their own individual PC devices, rather than the confusing options of sharing the passkeys with other devices like their smartphones, etc.

If the only device that was supported by default was a local passkey store on the device itself, with other optional storage locations like the smartphone or even security keys that require the use of a confusing list of options only presented when a person chooses to add or select these instead, then it might be easier for the typical non-technical user to make use of these relatively invisible items, since virtual objects (passkeys) and the existence of them on multiple various devices are simply too much complexity for the average person to understand or visualize.

As for where you stated, "To say insecure passwords are better than biometrics", I don't have any idea where you believe I said this, since everything I've written about passwords is they're highly insecure and useless and should die as quickly as possible.

I've stated that passkeys are better than most anything else that exists and since FIDO2 uses Biometrics as one way to enable the secure use of passkeys, yes those are better than passwords and in fact many other legacy options like TOTP codes, since passkeys themselves can't be easily phished and are useless on other devices. So, I think you've misinterpreted one of my statements.

Rob