Yahoo Mail is celebrating its 18th year this month, and to celebrate its momentous occasion, Yahoo is announcing three new updates: there's a brand new mobile app for both the Android and iOS platforms, additional support for third-party email accounts, and the new Yahoo Account Key to bring an end to passwords.
Yahoo! announced that starting on Thursday, Yahoo Mail app users on both the iOS and Android platforms will have access to a new service called 'Yahoo Account Key.' The new service will tie the user's email address to their smartphone number and app for easier identity verification, thus replacing traditional passwords that could be hacked remotely.
Users that log into their Yahoo Mail account will get a different password prompt as Yahoo will send a notification to their smartphones instead to confirm or deny the log in request. "Passwords are usually simple to hack and easy to forget. Account Key streamlines the sign-in process with a secure, elegant and easy-to-use interface that makes access as easy as tapping a button. It's also more secure than a traditional password because once you activate Account Key - even if someone gets access to your account info - they can't sign in," said Dylan Casey, Vice President of Product Management for Yahoo.
The approach, according to Symantec Security Manager Satnam Narang, is "a step above a password," but it falls short of the standard two-factor authentication, also known as 2FA. On Yahoo's side, Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo's Senior Vice President of Communications Products stated that while 2FA is the current standard for security, less than 10 per cent of Yahoo Mail users take advantage of it. It's somehow complicated for its users, he adds."You can always get immense level of password security but you can't get an immense level of password security that's simple and intuitive."
Besides the new account verification, Yahoo also announced a new version of Yahoo Mail for both Android and iOS devices - the new version brings third-party email support with Outlook, Hotmail, and AOL, with Google's Gmail in the works.
