Android Moves Towards Passwordless Logins

Google has announced that Android developers will soon be able to release apps that use a phone’s fingerprint scanner to authenticate users, rather than a password.

The news came after Android was granted FIDO2 certification by The FIDO Alliance, an open industry association founded by PayPal, Lenovo and others. Its mission is to “help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords”.

Fingerprint login was already an option for native apps, but the decision extends this capability to web apps and browser logins.

Google product manager Christiaan Brand said: “Google has long worked with the FIDO Alliance and W3C to standardize FIDO2 protocols, which give any application the ability to move beyond password authentication while offering protection against phishing attacks.

“Today’s announcement of FIDO2 certification for Android helps move this initiative forward, giving our partners and developers a standardized way to access secure keystores across devices, both in market already as well as forthcoming models, in order to build convenient biometric controls for users.”

A number of Android devices with foldable screens are hitting the market this month, with both Huawei and Samsung releasing their models recently.

An August update to the operating system saw a raft of Time Well Spent features introduced, including a breakdown of time spent in each app.

Dating sites often perform poorly on Time Well Spent measures. The Center for Humane Technology currently puts Grindr last on its ranking, claiming 77% of its users are unhappy.

Read more here.