Yahoo has announced it plans to make passwords obsolete with a new feature coming to Yahoo Mail, according to an article on cnet.com.

The new feature is part of the company’s plan to make its mail service easier to use and hopefully ramp up its cool factor.

To access your account, you enter your user name and select “Continue”, and the app will send an alert to your smartphone asking you if you wish to sign in.  Answer “Yes”, and you are immediately connected.

At a press event in San Francisco, Yahoo’s vice president of product management, Dan Casey said, “We’re going to kill passwords altogether.”

Far too many users have passwords that are easy to guess and use the same password on multiple accounts, from e-mail accounts and online services and even on their personal banking accounts.  Should a hacker successfully attack one of those accounts, they would also gain access to all your other services that use the same password.

Recent high-profile hacks have drawn much attention to digital vulnerability, including breaches at large previously-thought secure sites like the Internal Revenue Service, Sony Pictures and the much-publicized Ashley Madison dating site.

It’s not the first attempt by Yahoo to kill the password.  Last March, the internet giant announced a feature known as On-Demand passwords, that allowed its users to access their accounts with temporary passwords sent to the user’s phone.

It wasn’t well received however and only between 3 and 4 percent of the company’s 225 million active users took advantage of the offer.  According to the company’s senior vice president of communication products, Jeff Bonforte, the new system, called Account Key, is “far superior” to On-Demand passwords, and he expects the company will discontinue the older service in favor of the new.