The most important factor is that Windows doesn’t actually know what the picture is. Again, this could be considered not a big deal if you’re on a device that has a screen hardwired to it, but multi-monitor setups, graphics equipment swaps or other troubleshooting techniques could be problematic if the user forgets their regular password. The larger problem, however, is that Windows wants you to use this on a monitor that you use all the time. You’re also only making three gestures as your picture password, which really isn’t much but could be excused. Circling a sun, drawing a line from nose to nose, following the top of a fence and other relatively obvious factors may make this significantly weaker than the user initially thought. Picture passwords, unfortunately, fall into their own pattern just as easily. Traditional passwords have a particular set of criteria that most users tend to fall into that reduce the security of strong passwords: writing them on a sticky note, changing one key value in the password each time or some other method of creating a pattern. Here’s where the weaknesses of the picture password come into play. It will guide you through a number of options, including selecting a picture and showing you how to draw gestures on the image to show what is important You’re now in the Picture Password setup wizard.On the right side of the screen, you’ll see several different options for authentication, including Picture Password.After this, you’ll see a number of available options underneath the Accounts menu on the Left side of the screen.From here, you’re going to want to click on the Accounts option under Windows Settings.To activate a picture password, you’ll first want to click on Start and go to Settings.In addition, people that heavily use Microsoft’s Accessibility options or tablet-mode laptops could find this far faster and less frustrating than entering a password with an onscreen keyboard. But it’s easy to see why a security-minded person might want to trade a password that can be captured via a keylogger for an authentication method that only requires a mouse, producing a theoretically far more secure authentication mechanism.

Picture passwords have been around for some time now, though they still aren’t really in widespread use. In recent years, both of these elements have been incorporated into various Windows operating systems and can be used in place of a traditional username and password login.

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