By KYW Tech Editor Ian Bush

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — If you have too many passwords to remember or, worse, if you use the same one across every website, Google might have the answer for you.

Instead of typing in a user name and password to log in.Ian

“What Google is talking about is changing it,” says Wired magazine writer Robert McMillan, “you actually have to physically hold a kind of key that allows you to get into your account.”

McMillan says forthcoming Google research shows it would work in a USB slot, or even by tapping on a computer a ring or smartphone embedded with the system.

The grand idea?  No extra software; unlike some similar devices, it would work in a browser.  It’s super-secure, as long as you don’t lose the ring or your phone. And no passwords to remember.

“The flip side of it is that passwords are kind of good enough for all the stuff we do on the Internet,” says McMillan.  “We have lots of problems with them, but they sort of work, too.”

There is a push toward reinventing the way we log in, like capturing the rhythm with which you interact with a keyboard, mouse, or touch screen — your own digital fingerprint that doesn’t involve scanning your actual one.