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Here’s How Windows 10 Could Kill Passwords Forever

2 minute read

When Microsoft’s Windows 10 launches Wednesday, a lucky few users will be greeted at the login screen by a cartoon eyeball that appears to want to lock eyes with its owner. Do so, and it will activate a 3-D face scan that signs in users in seconds, no password required. The Windows team calls this snappy new login feature “Hello.”

“It’s our way of saying goodbye to passwords,” says Chaitanya Sareen, Microsoft’s principal program manager on Windows. Judging by Sareen’s recent demonstration to TIME, the feature is even more seamless than the iPhone’s thumb scanner — you don’t even have to lift a finger to use it.

“It’s actually using different dark and light shadows on the contours of my face,” says Sareen. “If it was pitch dark it would still sign me in.” That’s because Hello works with Intel’s Real Sense 3-D camera, which bathes the user’s face in infrared light, penetrating facial hair and dim lighting conditions.

Naturally, face scanning devices raises privacy concerns. Microsoft says facial data, like fingerprint and thumbprint data, is encrypted and stored locally on the device. At no point will it ever lift off into the cloud, according to Sareen. “Even if a hacker got [the data], you could still not reverse engineer my face, my fingerprint or my iris.”

See How Microsoft Windows Has Evolved Over 30 Years

Microsoft Windows 1.0
Windows 1.0 The seminal version of Windows released on November 20, 1985. Users could run programs in multiple windows simultaneously, sparing them the nuisance of quitting one application before launching another one.Microsoft
Microsoft Windows 95
Windows 95 released on August 24, 1995, equipping users with their first Start menu, as well as minimize and maximize buttons. Roughly 8 in 10 of the world's PC's were running Windows at the time of its release.Microsoft
Microsoft Windows 2000
Windows 2000 launched on February 17, 2000. Rocker Carlos Santana performed his song "Smooth" at the launch party, but the rollout proved bumpy due to several hack attacks that made headline news. Microsoft was forced into defense, releasing security patches throughout the product's lifecycle.Microsoft
Windows Vista
Windows Vista released on January 30, 2007, on the heels of the massive success of Windows XP. Vista proved to be a harder sell. Despite security improvements and graphical flourishes, such as transparent window panes and smoother animations, corporate users blanched at the initial price tag and the onerous licensing requirements. Adoption rates flagged as users stuck to their older versions of WindowsMicrosoft
Windows 7 released on October 22, 2009 to rave reviews and a palpable sense of relief that Microsoft had recovered from the missteps of Windows Vista. The system introduced a new "Snap" feature that enabled users to easily snap windows into place, side-by-side, for easy multitasking. It also debuted touch gestures in response to the burgeoning market for touchscreen devices.Microsoft
Windows 8 released on October 26, 2012, attempted to radically redesign the start screen with "Live Tiles," a grid of commonly used apps designed for easy touching. The vast majority of Windows users continued to use the desktop PC's, however, and found the redesign, particularly the loss of the Start button, disorienting.Microsoft
Windows 8.1 released on 17, 2013, attempts to bridge the chasm gap between touch and PC interfaces, offering users their choice of Start screens. By now, tech pundits have a theory: every release of Windows alternates between hits and misses, setting expectations high for the next version, Windows 10.Microsoft
Windows 10 which released on July 29, 2015, blends the familiar layout of Windows 7 with touch features from Windows 8. The Start menu makes a grand reentrance, with Live Tiles discreetly tucked inside. Cortana, Microsoft's speech-activated assistant for smartphones, will also debut across all devices.Microsoft

Should those security claims stand the test of time, biometric logins could offer a more secure alternative to passwords, which are often still shockingly easy to crack. The most commonly used password among victims of cybertheft alternates between “password” and “123456,” according to cybersecurity firm SplashData.

But don’t bid farewell to your passwords just yet. For now, Windows 10’s Hello feature will only be available on devices that come equipped with Intel’s camera. That’s a paltry list of 11 devices so far, plus another four only available in Japan. Microsoft says it’s prodding hardware manufacturers to broaden the selection of devices equipped with 3D cameras, though the price of the technology may prove prohibitively expensive to budget shoppers. In other words, the hardware will take some time to catch up with the software before users can kiss their passwords goodbye.

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