Re:iPhone X
by mikehall314 on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @09:57AM
(#15238267)
I thought something was mentioned about "active gaze" in the keynote? The phone detects if you're paying attention; it doesn't unlock if you have your eyes closed, it doesn't unlock if you aren't looking directly at it.
Should make it more difficult (though not impossible) to force an unlock by waving the phone in an unwilling person's face?
Not necessarily.
"Excuse me. Is this your phone?"
Or some derivative of that.
You only need to look at the phone for a brief moment. It's designed to quickly unlock. If you had to stare at the phone for 10 seconds it would be a frustrating experience.
Right, but couldn't somebody just use my actual face? Steal my phone, hold it up to my face for a second to unlock it and then run off?
A really interesting thing to think about is what happens if somebody is in custody and is refusing to unlock their phone, but uses face authentication? Can the police just hold their phone up to their face and unlock the device that way or is there any protection from that in the law?