Yahoo examining replacing passwords with social media photos

Yahoo is examining replacing passwords with a security system based on identifying photos of friends from social media sites, according to a patent filing.

Tom’s Hardware reports the online media giant has patented a log-in system that presents a user with a mix of his or her friends from social media accounts intermixed with random photos of other users.

The user is then asked to choose which of the photographs are of people they know and which are random users.

Upon correctly choosing their social media friends, the user is then asked to state the names of social media friends.

However, as Tom’s Hardware points out, the system may have some drawbacks, particularly for users with small numbers of social media friends, or for users who add a large number of friends they may have limited contact with to their social networks.