Microsoft Authenticator finally gets a password generator
In April 2021, Microsoft rolled out an Autofill feature to the Authenticator app. It lets you sync and save your passwords across all of your compatible devices signed in with the same Microsoft account. Whenever you try to log in to an online account, Autofill would automatically fill in the credentials for that account. On mobile apps, it lets you import passwords from other popular password managers as well. The Authenticator app grew into a password manager of sorts. But all this while, it was missing one important feature that prevented it from being a full-fledged password manager. It couldn’t generate passwords on its own. If you’re signing up for a new account or changing the password of an existing account, you had to manually create a password, or use some other password manager service to do that job. Thankfully, that’s changing now. Microsoft Authenticator can finally generate passwords too. Citing a Verizon report, Microsoft says “61 percent of data breaches happen due to leveraged passwords”. That’s because a consumer has an average of 90 password-protected online accounts. It’s pretty much impossible to create different passwords for each account and memorize them all. So many people end up using the same password for multiple accounts. This increases the risk of hacks or unauthorized access. There are numerous password manager apps that can not only help you generate unique yet strong passwords for each account but also securely store them. Microsoft Authenticator now qualifies as one. You can select various parameters such as whether the password needs to have alphabets, numbers, or special characters, as well as the length, and the app would come up with a unique password. Of course, you can always override the suggested passwords and create one manually.
The password generator feature is now rolling out
The new password generator feature is now rolling out to Microsoft Authenticator users with the latest update for the app. The feature is available on both Android and iOS platforms and also works on the Edge browser as well as Google Chrome through a browser extension. If you’re an Android user, you can click the button below to download the latest version of the app from the Google Play Store.
