Comment by hannasanarion
1 month ago
The point about poor support for 3rd party managers is so frustrating. Because this is correct, that is the obvious solution for the normal user, but passkey implementations somehow do not know how to deal with it.
Amazon prompts me to create a passkey everytime I log in, even when I logged in with a passkey, because my passkeys live in Bitwarden rather than my OS or browser.
And the confusing mechanism hurts there too: I'm always a little bit afraid that i'm somehow more in danger because I keep them in a vault that's shared on all my devices rather than a TPM, because whenever the protocol is explained the "it can't leave your device" part is highlighted as the main source of the security, except.... mine obviously do leave my device, with the vault, so.....
Yet, the Apple + Google implementations will sync passkeys between your devices. "Securely", of course. (I've seen first hand how Apple implements this, and it seems.... sound)
Sites can request hardware-bound tokens, which would block any software based password managers. It's an option in the protocol but one not yet widely utilized.
Which is a problem.
It should not be in the protocol. And I don't trust Apple and Google not to lock it away from me.
I want my own open source manager and if that is attempted I want it to lie about it.
I am torn on that. It seems fine for a corporate site to be sure employees are using their company issued tokens to access company data.
It does not seem fine for any other site to do this.
This may be the only place where it would be good with a software patent: corporate would not mind having to pay 10 usd/user/year, Google would never.
Lying about it may become impossible in the future when you throw hardware key attestation into the mix.
https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/security-...
1 reply →
Can we try to play nice now and recognize that other people have diverging, but valid, interests from your own? For example, securing things?
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So is there a problem with Apple or no?
I'd absolutely never trust Google to manage passwords/passkeys for me, with their habit of irrevocably auto-banning accounts. Apple seems... better? But that's today. That could change, and then you'd be screwed.
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I'm not qualified to say yes or no; but I will say that Apple's tends to make design decisions that try to empower the user as much as they can while still being easy to use, and have more or less maintained that position.where as Google, on the other hand, started as "open" and "you can do it all on our platform" to "we're taking away your control and choice little by little, in order to 'protect' you". Oh, and you hear more about Google perma-banning your account for no clear reasons, than Apple...
> Amazon prompts me to create a passkey everytime I log in, even when I logged in with a passkey, because my passkeys live in Bitwarden rather than my OS or browser.
What setup are you using? Because I don't have that problem on Linux + Firefox at all
Linux, Mac, and Windows (i happen to use all three regularly for work, hobbies, gaming), Firefox + Bitwarden.
It's totally possible there's something specific about my situation, or the way it was set up in the first place that enables this, idk, but somebody else replied saying they have the same experience so it's not just me.
And even if it was just me, it's still clearly something wrong on the provider's implementation, because it should not be possible for software to sidetrack the user into a passkey enrollment flow, when that user logged in with a passkey to open the current session.
I will take a wild guess (based on that you are using firefox) is that you probably have enabled the various don't save cookies, clear sessions on close or other hardened privacy settings that are the source of 99% of problems firefox users encounter, like increased cloudflare captchas .
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Very strange! Whatever the bug is, I hope Amazon fixes it.
It's quite crazy to just surprise a user with a passkey in any event, even if they get saved and don't reprompt you. Suddenly spawning an OS popup without any explanation, which may or may not try to ask for biometrics, is crazy.
> Amazon prompts me to create a passkey everytime I log in, even when I logged in with a passkey, because my passkeys live in Bitwarden rather than my OS or browser.
I haaaaaate this. And every time I'm like, "do I not already have one??" Passkey implementation has been half-assed by everyone.
I don't have any issues using Bitwarden as the default password manager on any of my devices, except the occasional Android/Google issue with apps where it opens the Chrome passkey store and doesn't prompt for Bitwarden.
But websites pretty much universally trigger the Bitwarden passkey prompt, or I can bypass via the popup and go to the OS passkey manager.
> Amazon prompts me to create a passkey everytime I log in, even when I logged in with a passkey, because my passkeys live in Bitwarden rather than my OS or browser.
I use 1Password and Amazon does not prompt me like that. However I do have two passkeys for Amazon, one in 1Password and one in Apple Passwords. There's not enough data yet to say if it happens to you because of something not working right between Bitwarden and Amazon, or something about Amazon doesn't work right if you don't have a passkey in your OS passkey store.
Might be worth adding a passkey for Amazon to your OS passkey store and see if the problem goes away. If it does, blame Amazon. If it does not, report it as a possible bug in Bitwarden (altough it still could be an Amazon bug that just happens to mess with Bitwarden but not 1Password).
It's amazon, I have 1password and it always asks me to create another security key