Paul Stenhouse: Passkeys for Facebook, Meta and Oakley collab for smart glasses, Kindle accessibility options

Better account security is coming to Facebook  

They will be adding passkey support. Why are Passkeys better? Because they prevent you from being tricked into giving your credentials to a fake site. They also can't be stolen, guessed, or leaked.   

A password doesn't care who it sends it to, you just hand it over and if it matches it lets you in, but you could be handing it over to anyone, the real site, or a fake site. A passkey is a more sophisticated form of authentication that first sends you a secret key. If that secret key matches, meaning that site and your device can now confirm they know each other, then a different key is sent back to log you in – the site also verifies that.  

Think of it like a secure handshake with only the one person you want to shake hands with – everything is verified before sending any details.  

 

Meta and Oakley are teaming up for a smart glasses collab  

Meta really wants smart glasses to be a thing! They're releasing five Oakley styles to appeal to more people. The Oakley glasses have a 3K front-facing camera (that records video), open-ear speakers, and microphones built into the frame. When connected to your phone you can listen to music or podcasts, conduct phone calls, or chat with Meta AI.  

 

Your Kindle is about to get more accessible  

With the latest software update rolling out there'll be more options for adjusting line spacing, paragraph spacing, word spacing, and even character spacing. It's a big improvement for those with vision impairments. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from news Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our texpert is here with details on a big change
coming to one of the world's most popular social media platforms.
Meta is changing the way that you log into your account.
Or Stenhouse is our text bit he's got the details.
Caut deport.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yeah, it's about changing, Jack, I think, and more about adding.
I would say, because that adding something called past key support.
And you're thinking, what on earth is a past key?
And is a really good reason why you should care
about this? And it's because it is significantly stronger and
more secure than a password. Why, right, It's because if

(00:47):
I try to explain to you a password, what you
do is you just basically over the Internet when you
go to a website, you just yell out what you
use a name and your password is right. It doesn't
check whether or not it is a legitimate website a
fake website. You're like, here's my user name, here's my password.
Try it and it tries it ever gets it right.
You get in it's wrong, you don't. The problem is

(01:10):
if you do go to like a malicious website and
you put your real credentials and they then have your
real credentials. So that is a real problem. Passwords can
be stolen, they can be guessed, they can be leaked.
So what is better than that, Well, that's this past
key thing, right, And more and more websites and apps
are starting to roll out these past keys, and for
good reason, because it is way more sophisticated. Why because

(01:33):
think of it more like a handshake, and you verified
both parties before you actually hand over that information. So
a past key, instead of you giving the information, it
first gives you and your device some information that says
I am Facebook or I am the Herold website, for example,
and your password manager then goes, okay, cool, I know

(01:55):
who you are. I've got a credential that we've already
exchanged in the past when you signed up. I'm going
to give you an encrypted special version of that back
and hey, Christo, that me that you can log in.
And it means that if anyone was to get into
your password manager and see this list of gobble you
goog they can't do a whole lot with it. And

(02:15):
if you go to a fake website, your passkey isn't
going to actually activate because it's not the real website.
And that special handshake hasn't taken place.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
And so do you have to memorize a code or
a password you would with a regular password.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
No, So what you do so it relies on your
device biometrics, right, So that means that it gets stored
on your device, It gets stored in your password manager.
So as long as you can get into that thing,
you're good. So if it's your iPhone or you're Android,
it might be your face or your fingerprint. If it's
a computer, it may be a password. But once you're
into that and it can do the handshaky bit, you're good.

(02:51):
You don't have to remember because it's long, it's really long.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense. Actually,
I've got one I think that I use at the moment.
I think the New Zealand's got a pass key, and
I found it a little bit confusing at first, like
a distinguishing between a pass code and asky or a
past word in a pass key. But that makes sense
and anything obviously that makes different accounts more secure has
got to be valuable. Hey, speaking of Facebook, metas So,

(03:16):
the company that owns Facebook, is teaming up with Oakley
the sunglasses designers for a new collab.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, they collabing on their smart glasses. They really want
these to be a thing. They are not going anywhere.
They have put out five new styles with Oakley and
I guess they try to appeal to more people with
some new designs and they've got some new flash specs
to Jack. These glasses have a three K front facing camera,

(03:44):
so you can record video in three K. That's nuts.
It's got speakers that kind of sit over your ear
in a microphone built into it, so if you are
connected to your phone and it's got Internet, you can
listen to music without putting headphones and it just kind
of plays it above your ear. It's kind of cool. Actually,
you can do phone calls, you can even ask meta

(04:04):
AI questions. But it is a bit spooky that it
records such high quality straight from the front of the camera.
We may be looking at I don't know, especially.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
With other people might not realize.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Yes, yeah, like going to are you going to take
your Are you going to take your glasses off when
you go into a changing room or something?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
I hope so you know, yeah, well oh yeah, I
hadn't even thought of that. Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah,
I mean it's a it's gonna be interesting, right because
a lot of the big, you know, a big big
tech companies sort of think that the smartphones have been
iterated to their endpoint or something equivalent to the end points,
so smartphones can't really improve in their current format as
they are. So they're looking for the next device, and

(04:45):
a lot of them are putting big bets on wearaballs
like glasses as being the kind of new smartphone. So
in ten years time, instead of texting away, will all
be using our eyes and voices to control things through
our hopefully well we'll see Hey, thanks so much more,
Catch you again soon our textbook Paul's Steenhouse.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
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