You might not forget the password to your primary account, but what about the old Yahoo Mail account that you used to use before you moved on to another provider? For those who check back every few months to see if they’ve missed any old emails, Yahoo may have found an answer to the issue of forgotten passwords, writes Mark Wilson for Beta News.
Yahoo to offer temporary passwords
The new feature is to be known as On-demand passwords, and will negate the need for answering security questions to reset a forgotten password by sending a temporary access code to your phone.
Yahoo’s Director of Product Management, Chris Stoner, says that the new feature will reduce the stress and anxiety associated with forgetting a password. The option is only available to Yahoo users in the U.S. at the moment, but it is thought that it will be introduced to other parts of the world if it proves to be a success.
Stoner wrote a blog post in which he stated: “Today, we’re hoping to make that process less anxiety-inducing by introducing On-demand passwords, which are texted to your mobile phone when you need them. You no longer have to memorize a difficult password to sign in to your account — what a relief!”
End-to-end encryption by the end of 2015
The only potential catch is that to set up the feature you will have to remember your password at least once, in order to log in and change your account settings. Those of you who manage to remember your password can then access the Account Security section before activating the On-demand passwords feature and confirming your phone number.
A new end-to-end encryption system was also announced by Yahoo, which will be introduced to Yahoo Mail by the end of the year if everything goes to plan. The new system was introduced during a video presentation at SXSW, and the source code is available on GitHub.
Encryption will not be automatic for every email, with users expected to activate the feature for particularly sensitive messages.
