> Don't use biometrics as a password; use them as a username

Even then people's faces change and through accidents fingerprints can also be changed / removed and then you're shit out of luck. I'm terrified I would store my important shit in something like that then get into a car accident or something and be no longer able to open it.

Implement it like the Xbox Kinect auto-signin where you still have a username but the camera lets the device figure it out on its own. That way people can still manually enter their username in the event of any disfiguring injury or technical glitches but don't have to normally.

Right but the post I was responding to said to use biometrics as the username hence my comment. You're suggesting using it as a type of password :)

No I'm not, I'm suggesting it be used to identify the user, then they can enter their password the same as always.

Yet another reason why this is a horrible idea.

"We couldn't detect your face/fingerprints please enter your username directly instead."

What if you get into a car accident and no longer remember the master password to your hardware password safe?

What if you remember it but lost your arms and are no longer able to type?

The car accident scenario is not very useful.

You can write down your master password somewhere, or share it with a loved one. This is no different from having backups for important data. You can't easily backup your iris, face, or fingerprints.

Biometrics are in a really weird place as far as security goes.

For the average person who's more concerned about opportunistic theft of a device than a targeted attack I'd argue that biometrics are more secure because you can't have the equivalent of a shitty password. There is no fingerprint equivalent of "1111" as your device PIN. A random pickpocket in the subway doesn't know who you are and thus can't implement any spoofs.

For anyone trying to defend against an attacker specifically targeting them, you're completely right.

Your fingerprints are probably all over the device they stole, though.

It's like if you wrapped your laptop in a decorative cover of your password written everywhere.

Similarly, if facial recognition becomes the standard, thieves will just take a snap when they rob you.

You average pick-pocket is not going to lift fingerprints of a phone. He will drop the phone in a plastic bag and fence it to someone who can lift the prints or factory reset it without the prints.

Can you factory reset an iPhone without the passcode? I thought Activation Lock was supposed to prevent this?

You can wipe without a passcode, but if the user turned on Find My iPhone before the phone was wiped, the phone will be a brick until one logs into the associated iCloud account.

Probably worth more as parts to a more shady repair shop. Last I heard, a shiny new laptop's only worth a couple hundred when fenced.

And this is better, somehow?

Depends if it reduces theft.

I think post Activation Lock and similar features on smartphone platforms, thieves usually sell stolen devices to those who rip them apart to get to specific parts that they can resell. That will continue until the phone makers figure out how to disable the display, digitizer, battery and other parts that have value even in a "bricked" phone.

> Your fingerprints are probably all over the device they stole, though

Including very likely the fingerprint scanner itself.

What's your point? If a random pick-pocketer steals a phone from me, they don't care about accessing my data. If they wanted to, it's easier with face/fingerprint recognition. Just grab my picture from facebook/twitter/find me by email or phone number, fingerprints are on my phone, batter, sim card, screen... everywhere. It's slightly more expensive than printing my picture from facebook but many times proven, doable. On the other hand... how can you guess my pattern lock or SHITYPassword1111?

If I'm a victim of a targetted attack, better not to have a phone at all.

Indeed, Microsoft (of all companies) had a blog post about this that I came across a while ago that nicely summarizes this.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc512578.aspx

Fingerprint and face recognition don't have the same threat models. And two differ from password too. For end users, fingerprint makes sense:

- Stealing fingerprint requires access to your fingerprint in the first place. That narrows down the attack surface A LOT. - Coercing someone to authenticate is possible for password too. Unlike fingerprints passwords can be stolen remotely. - People tend to use same PIN everywhere. Therefore "can't change your biometric info" isn't that big of a problem. Fingerprints aren't prone to dictionary attack either because there are no "common fingerprints".

Face recognition can be bypassed more easily thanks to a huge database of faces called facebook.

But we shouldn't reject a security solution outright before properly analyzing the threat model. They all can have their legitimate use cases for certain scenarios.

> Stealing fingerprint requires access to your fingerprint in the first place.

This is not as difficult as some might think. We leave them all over our devices for example, but physical access is not even necessary. Jan Krissler managed to get the fingerprint of the German defense minister 2 years ago using only photos of her.