Apple Shares In-Depth Security Info on Face ID in New White Paper and Support Doc

[kdarling]

Who exactly would have my phone for a few hours to even try ? Police aren't gonna go to that extreme, but criminals might.

I don't need your phone until the moment I've made a fake print. I could spend days or weeks ahead of time making sure I got a good print of the correct finger. But few would target someone like that unless the purpose was some kind of intelligence grab. Or an angry spouse

Secure enough.....

Yep, I've pointed out many times that while easily fooled with a good fake print, TouchId is "secure enough" for the majority of people and their situations.

 

[Keirasplace]

That's not it at all.

If the "future" was something more convenient than the current state-of-the-art, I'd be all for it. Under glass fingerprint sensors or whatever they can think of.

Face scanning is just less convenient than the existing unlock method. This is as clear as daylight. It requires a longer and more complex interaction with the phone, just to unlock it.

And what do you mean by "perfect it"? That it would unlock the phone when I'm simply around, instead of me lifting it and looking at it?

First thing, I don't actually want this, I want to decide for myself when to unlock my phone, not the phone to make this decision. Secondly, I can already do this today, I wear a smartwatch and I can set it as trusted Bluetooth device on the phone, so the phone is unlocked when it's around me. I don't use this feature precisely because I want to have control over the unlock.

This is not "the future", it's just a speed bump on the road, and I guess once they manage to do the under-glass fingerprint sensor it will become roadkill.

How on earth does it require a longer interaction, it's unlocked as soon as you see your phone. Good god.
IF you say something, it doesn't make it true.

 

[AAPL_DayTrader]

Thanks for publishing this article. It was very informative as was the PDF that was linked to.

Even though my eyes are extremely sensitive to light, I've decided to wait to buy the iPhone X later instead of purchasing the iPhone 8 Plus now for a number of reasons that go beyond the addition of the technologically sophisticated True Depth camera system. I had already found out by calling Apple that the Face ID could be manually disabled. I do realize, however, that if I decide to test it out (Face ID) and experience any eye discomfort whatsoever, I'll need to enter my passcode every time I want to unlock the device. Despite the odds of a security compromise being 1 out of 50K with Touch ID compared to 1 out of a million with Face ID, I do wish Apple's engineers had developed some way of attaching a fingerprint-scanning hardware device via a Lightning connector that would enable the option of using Touch ID in lieu of Face ID. Even a Voice ID layer of security would have been OK with me despite being perhaps the most easily infiltrated defensive barrier to intrusion.

But alas, future generations will harvest the crops of evolutionary progress sown by the seeds of seemingly annoying discomfort in the present.

I did get the Apple representative to laugh during our phone conversation when I casually mentioned something about buying a pet for the sole purpose of using as a guinea pig to test out the Face ID functionality. I was thinking along the lines of a dog even though the dog wouldn't be able to respond to my line of questioning about whether or not those 30,000 laser dots and the unseen undetected emissions from the infrared section of the True Depth camera had any adverse effects on its electro-chemical mechanism. Any bite marks above or below my belt would not be the kind of answer I would have ideally been seeking especially if my dog's eyes begin to smoke just as those teeth are sinking into the intended target. And obviously, carrying my pet dog around with me to unlock my Apple iPhone X might get me kicked out of Walmart even if he refrains from mistaking anyone's leg as being a fire hydrant. And if my dog starts dating some French poodle he meets online, he'll be more concerned with making her giggle with his original animoji animations than asking Siri to check for new e-mail messages addressed to me. And since dogs are prone to be more intellectually advanced than we often give them credit for, I'm sure my pet would quickly realize that whenever I want to unlock my iPhone X, if he closes his eyes and opens his mouth in anticipation of his favorite doggy snack treat (this being known as blackmail among humans), I'd have to either give in to his doggy-demands or bypass the Face ID option altogether.

I realize how foolish this must sound to the discerning reader of this comment. How absurd of me to consider a dog to take the place of a better suited specimen from the animal kingdom to serve this purpose, a Chimpanzee. The human-emulating aspects of a chimp is more likely to fool the Face ID's neural network of bionic detectors and since I like bananas too, it's a win-win situation.