Opinions are divided amongst tech experts regarding the safety of the newly-released Yahoo enhancement

Mar 21, 2015 10:55 GMT  ·  By

Recently, Yahoo has come up with a brand new feature for its users who have difficulties with remembering their passwords.

The tech company has offered a new solution for those who cannot access their accounts because they forgot their passwords and announced the release of the on-demand password enhancement, meant to make our lives easier.

If you have not heard of it by now, the on-demand option refers to the fact that Yahoo will text a temporary password to those who want to sign in but cannot remember their old one.

Of course, in order to make this feature available for your account, you must first turn it on from the security settings. This way, next time you try to log in to Yahoo, you will be able to see the “send my password” option. All you have to do is click on that button and you will shortly receive a four-character password on your mobile phone.

Security issues

Many people were thrilled about the idea of not having to remember their passwords, especially when having multiple online accounts and different passwords for each of them.

Tech experts, however, are not so sure about how secure the whole process is. Tim Erlin, IT risk strategist and director of product management and security, stated that "Yahoo just made it easier for attackers to compromise an account," as reported by Tripwire.

However, people have already tried out the feature and they seem to be quite happy with this innovative method. Although they are aware that hackers might gain access to their accounts more easily and rapidly with this much easier authentication process, with the use of malware on their mobile phones, Yahoo users seem to have taken the news pretty well, mainly because now they don’t have to fill their heads with difficult-to-remember passwords.

No cases of people’s accounts having been hacked after using the feature have been reported so far, but it might be just a matter of time.