Amazon offers free upgrade to millions of accounts – it takes seconds to claim and ignoring it could cost you dearly

AMAZON is offering customers the chance to significantly upgrade their accounts.

You can claim a major security perk that gives you big protections against hackers.

1

It’s totally free to claim and is quietly being rolled out to users, as spotted by TechCrunch and verified by The U.S. Sun – so check your account now.

The new feature is called Passkeys, an increasingly popular alternative to passwords for signing in.

Both iPhone and Android phones offer the trick, as Passkeys are being pushed by Apple and Google as a safer way for you to log in.

But you can only use Passkeys on apps and services that add support for it – as Amazon is now doing.

“Passkeys are an easier and safer way to sign in than passwords,” Amazon explained.

“It works with the same face, fingerprint or PIN that you already use to unlock your device.

“We don’t store your face, fingerprint, or PIN data.”

To set up a Passkey, log onto the Amazon website and go to Your Account > Login & Security > Passkey.

Then you’ll be able to enable Passkeys on your account.

What is a Passkey?

Passwords are dangerous.

Plenty of people will use short passwords that can be easily “cracked”.

And even people who use more complicated passwords will often re-use them to avoid remembering multiple log-ins.

That’s a huge problem, as even complex passwords can end up being leaked online.

And hackers will try those leaked passwords on other services, hoping that you’ve re-used them.

That’s why Apple, Google and others are pushing Passkeys as an alternative to passwords.

They let you log in using the same method you’d use to unlock your phone.

On an iPhone, that might be Face ID or Touch ID – and it’s a similar story for Android phones too.

Thanks to what Google calls “secure cryptography”, your Passkey can’t be leaked.

“We’ve found that one of the most immediate benefits of passkeys is that they spare people the headache of remembering all those numbers and special characters in passwords,” Google said.

“They’re also phishing resistant.”

Increasing numbers of companies are working on rolling out Passkeys.

And it’s expected that passwords will eventually be phased out.

“We know that new technologies take time to catch on — so passwords may be around for a little while,” Google explained in a blog post.

“In the meantime, we’ll continue encouraging the industry to make the pivot to passkeys — making passwords a rarity, and eventually obsolete.”

This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk