How new apps and services are using your phone as a proxy for you

Yahoo last week unveiled a novel concept: Access to your Yahoo Mail account without a password. What is a password, anyway? If you think about it, a password is a way to authenticate a person. You create a chunk of random knowledge that only you know. Later, to prove you're you, you demonstrate mastery of that knowledge. Only you would know to type "corndog658" when prompted, so obviously you're authorized for access. It's a great way to authenticate, at least until someone steals or guesses your password. Yahoo's system, which it calls Account Key, works like this: Install the Account Key mobile app (the system works only with the smartphone app), log in with your username and password. Tap the profile icon and choose Settings. Tap Account Key and enable it. (This is the moment at which password authentication becomes phone device authentication.) From that point on, you can simply access your Yahoo email from your phone without a password. According to Yahoo, when you try to check your Yahoo Mail from any device or desktop computer, you'll get a notification on your smartphone asking you to confirm that you are actually you. What this means is that, as far as Yahoo is concerned, "you" aren't someone who can demonstrate a chunk of arbitrary knowledge. "You" are anyone with physical access to your smartphone. You ARE your smartphone, as far as Yahoo is concerned. Stated another way, the authenticated human is whichever person has access to the authenticated smartphone. Welcome to the new identity. An increasing number of services don't care about your password, your signature or even your mailing address. If you've got the authenticated phone, you're you. Shipping without addresses Before cellphones, you could never really call a person directly. You called a place and hoped the person would be there. You dialed a building or location, then asked whoever answered: "Is Bob there?" Now you just call Bob. You don't care where Bob is. You just call the phone, and because you expect Bob to have possession of said phone, you can call a person. The phone is Bob. A similar change is happening to the act of sending packages. Right now, you don't send a package to a person, but to a place. You ship to a home or office, and expect the person to be there at some point to receive the package. A startup called Shyp last week completely changed how packages are shipped. Instead of shipping to a place, you ship to a person -- no matter where the person is. What Readers Like Hands on with the new iPhone 6S Plus Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman This Ashley Madison hack story keeps getting worse and worse [u4] dell vancouver laptop IDG Contributor Network Don't bother with Microsoft Windows 10 until you read this Right now, shipping a package to an address involves writing the exact address on the package. Sure, you put the name on the package. But the shipping company or post office doesn't care about that. They deliver to the number, street name, ZIP code and other place-specific information. Like all great on-demand services, Shyp makes things work better with an app. When you sign up for the app, you create a unique username. When someone ships a package to you, they address it to that username, not the address of a building. You can track the package in the app. If you decide you're going to be somewhere else when it's scheduled to arrive, you can change the destination well after it's been shipped. The package will go wherever you are, not to whichever building's address is written on the label. Shyp is also cool because of Uberfication. When you want to send a shipment, you snap a picture of the item to be shipped, and within 20 minutes someone shows up at your house to take it away. Shyp will do all work, they professionally package it at their warehouse and they’ll find the lowest shipping rate among carriers. This is possible because you are defined at your smartphone. Right now, Shyp is limited to people sending from San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago.