What a passkey actually is
A passkey is a cryptographic key pair created by your device. The private half never leaves your phone, laptop or hardware key; the site only ever stores the public half. There is no shared secret to phish, reuse or leak in a breach.
Because the key is bound to the real website's domain, a look-alike login page simply cannot receive it. That single property removes the most common account-takeover route used against ordinary people.
What changes for your logins
Most platforms now offer passkeys alongside passwords rather than instead of them. Adding one does not usually remove the old password, so the weaker method often remains as a fallback an attacker can target.
- Create a passkey on your most valuable accounts first: email, then banking, then social
- Register at least two devices, or a hardware security key, so losing one phone does not lock you out
- Where the platform allows it, remove SMS codes once passkeys are working
- Keep your password manager — it now stores passkeys as well as passwords
Recovery is the part people get wrong
Your account is only as strong as its weakest recovery path. If a passkey-protected account can still be reset with an SMS code to a recycled phone number, nothing has really improved. Review the recovery options on each account after you add a passkey and remove the ones you no longer use.