One of life’s most common frustrations is trying to remember your password for a infrequently used but important service. A new feature brought to myGov will hopefully make that a thing of the past.
As of last week, Australians can now access their myGov accounts without having to remember their password of at least 7 characters in length, with at least one letter and one number.
But don’t worry, this new feature doesn’t mean your myGov won’t be as secure.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has rolled myGovID as an option for logging into myGov accounts.
If you aren’t up-to-date with all the government’s similar sounding services, myGovID is a digital identity verification service. The DTA has been working on it for quite a while, and ran a 159 person trial earlier this year.
Users can use it in lieu of a password with many of the government’s online services, similar to using two-factor authentication logins.
A government portal will ask for a user’s code. Users open the myGovID app which provides a code to log in.
Like when you go to get a drivers license, setting up your myGovID requires 100 points of identification which you can upload through the app.
And after then, you can authorise it to work with a range of services: the Department of Education’s Student Portal, the Australian Tax Office’s Business Portal and now myGov.
The way myGovID has been designed means that each service won’t necessarily have access to all the details a user uploads to verify their identity. Rather, the service essentially ‘vouches’ for the identity of a user.
Of course, using myGovID to log into remains just an option at the moment. So anyone who wants to keep these services apart, the password isn’t going anywhere.
Still, good news for anyone who can never remember their password.