Fighting With A Passkey

[Zema Bus]

I've been working on my taxes, and I went in to get the tax documents from an old HSA account (I've had that from when I had a high deductible) like I do every year. This time they said I would need to create a passkey to use in place of my password. So I went through all the hoops to create one, but at the end I get this message in Firefox:

"Touch your security key to continue with.."

This isn't my screenshot but it shows what it looks like:

passkeymessage.jpg

I had zero idea what I was supposed to do. I tried clicking that fingerprint icon but it does nothing. I found other complaints about this (one of them I got that screenshot from). Someone said they got the proper dialog that's supposed to show up by doing it in a Chromium based browser. I tried it in Chromium but I didn't even get to that step, it tried to make me validate my ID with a 3rd party site using my driver license and a selfie - screw that! The site tries to steer users into using their phones for this (it says "Recommended"), but if they opt to use a desktop computer they say they only support Windows and MacOS, not that that should matter. I finally gave in and used my phone, with the idea that I'd workout getting the tax doc off my phone, probably via my NAS. I hate doing things like that on a phone. I had to install their phone app but it worked OK. But after all that they didn't even have the tax document ready yet

[Grogan]

Oh man, what a waste of time. I don't like authentication keys. There's nothing wrong with a good password. The key based authentication is more likely to mess you up than anything else.

[Zema Bus]

Yeah I have a feeling this is going to be a nightmare in the future. As long as they're going to use something beyond passwords I wish they'd just use time-based authentication, that always works well.

[Grogan]

oh yeah, those temporal code dongles. I used to see people with those for logging into work. It would be reliable, but LESS reliable than a password in one way. Someone can be relieved of their dongle. (just like fingers )