Well, the problem here is that big corps are doing obviously-wrong things with user data. It's not like there's any uncertainty in the industry about how to do things correctly, it's just that these corps and many others are deciding not to.

What makes you think they would make better decisions if the technology was called something other than "passwords"?

There is no technology that cannot be ruined by ignorant implementation.

Passwords suck for other reasons. This is a poor example.