Last September, four mobile carriers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon) announced Project Verify, a way to log into apps without making a new account or password by instead relying on smartphones to authenticate identities.

Now, Project Verify has an official name — ZenKey — and it’s starting to roll out very slowly, says a news report. 

"ZenKey’s pitch is that you should be able to use your phone, the device that’s already on you all the time, as a way to verify your identity and in a way that goes beyond the now-standard SMS authentication that has in the past few years become especially vulnerable to hacks. When it was Project Verify, the carriers said that they verified your identity using not just your phone number, but also your carrier account tenure, phone account type and SIM card." says the news report. 

Users are going to have to set up the ZenKey app that’s offered by their specific carrier and add a PIN or biometric authentication so that identities can approved whenever the app is used, says the news report. Additionally, ZenKey has promised future logins should be faster and easier, notes the report, and it has made promises of giving users more responsibility and control over their data. It is similar to Apple’s “Sign in with Apple” initiative that promises better security and more privacy protections around account credentialing, says the report.