Yahoo Favouring "On-Demand Passcode" In Favour Of Traditional Password

Yahoo is looking at a new way to remove traditional passwords from its email service, showing off a new “on-demand password” service at SXSW earlier this month.

Instead of creating and remembering one password, Yahoo’s new authentication process is similar to two-step mobile verification, without the pesky password part.

This does lower the amount of security on the Yahoo Mail account, but passwords have always been the downfall of security, while new authentication methods surpass passwords fully when it comes to security and ease-of-use.

It is just one part of Yahoo’s new efforts to make its email client secure. At SXSW, Yahoo also announced end-to-end encryption of “sensitive emails” would be coming to Yahoo Mail by the end of the year.

The encryption will cover the bulk of the message, allowing users to feel safe in the fact governments, hackers and advertisers are incapable of reading the message sent, even if they manage to collect the data and store it.

Yahoo will try and bring the end-to-end encryption to everyone by the end of the year, slowly moving into all messages regardless of importance. It is not clear if the user will be able to set if it is a sensitive message, or if Yahoo uses algorithm to decide.

Yahoo Mail has never been noted as particularly excellent when it comes to security, but the company is focused on making sure the issues plaguing the current crop of email clients gives them a shot back into the market.

Even though it has lost millions of users in the past few years, Yahoo Mail still has a strong user base of 300 million. CEO Marissa Mayer is definitely keen to see those 300 million users become more than just email users, stretching into all services available on Yahoo’s supported mobile and web platforms.