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TouchID iPhone 6s freak accident?

S

snavel

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 5, 2014
6
0
Haugesund, Norway
So, last week I helped one on my coworkers set up their new iPhone 6s. I'm the tech-guy at work..
We went through the initial steps, including TouchID. After completing setup and bla-bla, I pressed the home-button to get her to unlock her phone but IT ACCEPTED MY FINGERPRINT.
What the heck? At first I thought it had to be some residual finger-grease-gunk, resulting in "her print" being read, but I absolutely made sure the home-button was perfectly clean.
Still accepted my finger. Her thumb, my index - both were able to unlock the phone.
I deleted the fingerprint, she added her print again - this time only her finger unlocked.

Bug or freak accident?
 
That looks like a pretty serious bug. So you're saying is that you never touched the sensor with that finger yet it still unlocked it every time? Did you touch it during the initial setup phase and then she continued onwards? Because that might cause 2 fingerprints to get into one file.
 
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soupcan said:
That looks like a pretty serious bug. So you're saying is that you never touched the sensor with that finger yet it still unlocked it every time? Did you touch it during the initial setup phase and then she continued onwards? Because that might cause 2 fingerprints to get into one file.
Click to expand...

The first time I touched the sensor was after setup was complete. There is no way two prints was "overlapped" during setup.. Unlocked every time, yes.
 
snavel said:
Yes, I did that the same day. Said so in the first post. It never happened again after that..
Click to expand...
Chances are it's user error whereby what actually happened with the iPhone setup where different than the recant. If there was truly a bug like that would be all over the Internet.
 
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snavel said:
So, last week I helped one on my coworkers set up their new iPhone 6s. I'm the tech-guy at work..
We went through the initial steps, including TouchID. After completing setup and bla-bla, I pressed the home-button to get her to unlock her phone but IT ACCEPTED MY FINGERPRINT.
What the heck? At first I thought it had to be some residual finger-grease-gunk, resulting in "her print" being read, but I absolutely made sure the home-button was perfectly clean.
Still accepted my finger. Her thumb, my index - both were able to unlock the phone.
I deleted the fingerprint, she added her print again - this time only her finger unlocked.

Bug or freak accident?
Click to expand...
This has happened to me a few times on my iPhone 5s, not sure how. Probably bug
 
I ran into this last year. I was helping a roommate get her phone setup and we had the same issue. I never touched her phone, yet one of my fingers would unlock it. I posted about it last year, but most people kept telling me that I MUST have accidentally touched her phone during setup (like I wouldn't have noticed that!). One or two people mentioned that my finger might be similar enough to her to fool it. I never did get a satisfactory answer. I finally just dropped it altogether since it wasn't really a problem for us.
 
Probably Apple need to improve this fingerprint sensor, again. This time however, is the accuracy? Precision?
 
Shirasaki said:
Probably Apple need to improve this fingerprint sensor, again. This time however, is the accuracy? Precision?
Click to expand...
Most probably and I agree with that! There should be no room for bugs when it comes to private use.
 
DreiD said:
Most probably and I agree with that! There should be no room for bugs when it comes to private use.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and given the fact that no iPhone camera can deal with retina recognition.

Pretty lucky I don't need to suffer in this generation of iPhone.
 
I actually had something similar happen with my mom's 6s when I was setting it up for her at the Apple Store. After she did her fingerprint we updated the software and then I picked it up and used my finger print like I would on my phone out of habit and it opened the phone. I was pretty surprised since Touch ID doesn't like my mom's fingerprint...it hardly ever works for her. But I'd didn't keep trying it over and over as we were in a rush. Maybe I'll test it when I see her next.
 
DreiD said:
Most probably and I agree with that! There should be no room for bugs when it comes to private use.
Click to expand...

Bug? I don't think anyone is saying anything about this being a bug. I think it has more to do with similar fingerprints. In fact if you Google "similar fingerprints" you'll find tons of articles on the topic. It seems true that everyone's prints are different. But they can be quite similar. Especially among family (twins in particular).

As the technology improves hopefully they'll get more precision and will register less false hits. Until then, anyone who thinks they have the only fingers in the world that will unlock their phone is fooling themselves. I'm not sure how many people would need to try to unlock your phone before someone got lucky, but I've heard 3-4 stories of this happening in the past year.
 
MEJHarrison said:
Bug? I don't think anyone is saying anything about this being a bug. I think it has more to do with similar fingerprints. In fact if you Google "similar fingerprints" you'll find tons of articles on the topic. It seems true that everyone's prints are different. But they can be quite similar. Especially among family (twins in particular).

As the technology improves hopefully they'll get more precision and will register less false hits. Until then, anyone who thinks they have the only fingers in the world that will unlock their phone is fooling themselves. I'm not sure how many people would need to try to unlock your phone before someone got lucky, but I've heard 3-4 stories of this happening in the past year.
Click to expand...
Interesting, would say it's mighty rare. How many millions of iPhones with print ID out in world now? I remember early on when Print ID first started someone tried doing several fingers at same training. And it would accept multiple fingers on one prints. They did it to get more fingers to be accepted.
 
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