I am guilty of not paying attention to that thread about Yahoo Japan and that idea of changing from a password system to SMS or FIDO (not sure what that .txt thingy is about).
Firstly, I'm amazed that nobody had anything to post about that idea. Nobody here, I mean.
Secondly, I find the idea to be awful. As one comment pointed out on the originating site's article, it only takes the bad folks a bit of time to figure out how to break through any sort of security system.
Thirdly, this really smells like a sort of brown-nosing to those that sell those little machines called Android and iPhone. And the article indicated Google was involved in some sort of research on this, so they have their hand in that pot and they know full well that improves the usage of their Android product.
And what if one doesn't want to use one of those little machines to be reading this or that funny picture thingy to do something. Those folks are just like not important? No big loss of revenue by dumping that group of folks?
Obviously, I think this idea stinks.
But if you really wanted to test something like that, sure is the right place to try. Japanese folks can be so very obedient to the upper classes and so also to the big money companies. I hope that doesn't come across as racist, but it is very true. I've been here for over 35 years and so I am sure about that point on the culture here. And I have lived in other Asian nations and can state for sure that, for example, the Korean folks are so very different; although they do come a tad closer to obedience tendencies that you won't find in my home nation; the United States. Koreans are better at hiding their obedient tendencies than are the Japanese. The Japanese actually look upon it as a sort of bragging thing. (Well, I didn't see an increase in obedience tendencies when last I lived in the U.S. so many years ago. Maybe you U.S. folks have changed and I don't see that sort of change on the military facilities I frequent.)
So the idea of testing a passwordless system in Japan was a smart move.
Is this passwordless system being tested in the U.S., or the UK, or in any EU nation?
