Usability of Passwordless Authentication in Wi-Fi Networks: A Comparative Study of Passkeys and Passwords in Captive Portals

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 26 Mar 2026] Usability of Passwordless Authentication in Wi-Fi Networks: A Comparative Study of Passkeys and Passwords in Captive Portals Martiño Rivera-Dourado, Rubén Pérez-Jove, Alejandro Pazos, Jose Vázquez-Naya Passkeys have recently emerged as a passwordless authentication mechanism, yet their usability in captive portals remains unexplored. This paper presents an empirical, comparative usability study of passkeys and passwords in a Wi-Fi hotspot using a captive portal. We conducted a controlled laboratory experiment with 50 participants following a split-plot design across Android and Windows platforms, using a router implementing the FIDO2CAP protocol. Our results show a tendency for passkeys to be perceived as more usable than passwords during login, although differences are not statistically significant. Independent of the authentication method, captive portal limitations negatively affected user experience and increased error rates. We further found that passkeys are generally easy to configure on both platforms, but platform-specific issues introduce notable usability challenges. Based on quantitative and qualitative findings, we derive design recommendations to improve captive portal authentication, including the introduction of usernameless authentication flows, improved captive portal detection mechanisms, and user interface design changes. Comments: This is an author version. It has not been peer reviewed Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) Cite as: arXiv:2603.25290 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2603.25290v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.25290 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Martiño Rivera-Dourado [view email] [v1] Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:28:41 UTC (1,420 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: cs cs.HC References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)