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Touch ID or password?

I

iphonefreak450

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 14, 2014
873
168
Please let me know if I’m in the incorrect forum thread related to my question below.

Just thinking about using Touch ID instead of my current account password to unlock my MacBook Pro.

What do you think? Should I make the switch or is it less secure than a password?

I also have FileVault turned on as well.

If I want to switch to using Touch ID to unlock my MacBook, do I need to first turn off FileVault encryption and then turn FileVault encryption on again?
 
Will FileVault encryption still work for Touch ID or is FileVault encryption only tied to using just only a password?
 
if you are not Snowden, TouchID is good, but of course could be easily faked by more organzied criminal organizations, or yours truly governments if they have the intention to.

keep in mind though that you will still regularly need your password too, especially after a restart of your computer, or if you haven't beem using it for a couple of days.
and others will still have the option to just try to hack your password and disregard TouchID completely

but again, as long as you are not Snowden, TouchID is good!
 
I know…. I just read through the guide and the last section states that a password is still required when booting up the MacBook after restart or powering on after a shutdown.

Then what is the point?

Thanks for the explanation but since I always shut down my MacBook, then I don’t see no point using Touch ID.
 
iphonefreak450 said:
I know…. I just read through the guide and the last section states that a password is still required when booting up the MacBook after restart or powering on after a shutdown.

Then what is the point?

Thanks for the explanation but since I always shut down my MacBook, then I don’t see no point using Touch ID.
Click to expand...
why do you always shut it down?

You will get better performance by letting it sleep as apps and data are cached to ram, and might actually gain some battery life as SSD reads are considerably more expensive on battery than RAM use
 
iphonefreak450 said:
I always shut down my MacBook, then I don’t see no point using Touch ID.
Click to expand...
Do you ever lock the screen? TouchID unlocks it. Do you use Apple Wallet? TouchID authenticates it. Do you use the App Store, or buy media like books movies, or TV shows? Sign in to iCloud? TouchID authenticates them all.

But the best reason to use TouchID is you can have a longer more secure password since you won’t be typing it as often.
 
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Researching this:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204587


Relevant Extract:

Secure Enclave​

The chip in your device includes an advanced security architecture called the Secure Enclave, which was developed to protect your passcode and fingerprint data. Touch ID doesn't store any images of your fingerprint, and instead relies only on a mathematical representation. It isn't possible for someone to reverse engineer your actual fingerprint image from this stored data.

Your fingerprint data is encrypted, stored on disk, and protected with a key available only to the Secure Enclave. Your fingerprint data is used only by the Secure Enclave to verify that your fingerprint matches the enrolled fingerprint data. It can’t be accessed by the OS on your device or by any applications running on it. It's never stored on Apple servers, it's never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else, and it can't be used to match against other fingerprint databases.
 
the fingerprint is just an add-on to make handling longer passwords more convenient.
in itself it doesn't add any layer of security at all, since the option to just skip it and use the password instead still exists.
in fact, you now have two possible entry points into your system instead of just one, of which either one of them could be hacked.
 
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