Author Topic: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?  (Read 10663 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Kjelt

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6459
  • Country: nl
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #25 on: September 17, 2017, 01:01:45 pm »
Indeed the largest problem with biometrics is that you can not revoke or change your biometric data.
If it is stolen/copied once you are powned. That is why you always should use a hash or abstraction of the data with a changeable key for instance and never store the raw biometric data it self.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #26 on: September 17, 2017, 03:03:20 pm »
Indeed the largest problem with biometrics is that you can not revoke or change your biometric data.
If it is stolen/copied once you are powned. That is why you always should use a hash or abstraction of the data with a changeable key for instance and never store the raw biometric data it self.
That last bit is the exact problem with most biometric data: you can't. A password is the exact same every time, so you can compare hashes. A scanned finger will never be the exact same twice, so you cannot make a hash. Due to this, you will need to store much more identifying information, which leads to the possibility of them being stolen. They are working hard on all sorts of mitigating strategies, but so far, this has always been the problem.

Add to that the problem of not being able to change the data, and you are setting yourself up for problems.
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #27 on: September 17, 2017, 03:50:29 pm »
If you train a computer to recognize a face, it will also "recognize" a printed photo of that person.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline glarsson

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 814
  • Country: se
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #28 on: September 17, 2017, 03:56:25 pm »
If you train a computer to recognize a face, it will also "recognize" a printed photo of that person.
No. Unless you train it to ignore the depth, temperature and movement information from the 3d camera.
The Samsung implementation will recognize a photo held in front of the 2d camera.
The Apple implementation will not recognize a photo held in front of the 3d camera.
 
The following users thanked this post: tooki

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #29 on: September 17, 2017, 04:00:20 pm »
If you train a computer to recognize a face, it will also "recognize" a printed photo of that person.
If you use an infrared camera instead of a normal one, or the two combined, the system will be able to discern paper from living flesh without trouble.
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11341
  • Country: ch
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #30 on: September 17, 2017, 04:22:46 pm »
If you train a computer to recognize a face, it will also "recognize" a printed photo of that person.
Please, folks, watch the keynote before you comment...
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #31 on: September 17, 2017, 04:35:03 pm »

International agreements contain rules to the effect that if a multinational corporation gives one country some privilege they all likely deserve 'like' privileges-  Also, corporations get a substantial amount of money from countries as compensation for various kinds of data.

Those factors probably play into these kinds of hardware/software decisions, as well as events too.

« Last Edit: September 17, 2017, 04:52:57 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #32 on: September 17, 2017, 04:58:21 pm »
I based that on an experiment I did with OpenCV, which did think it was me when presented with a black and white laser printed photograph.  You're right in that an IR or combination thermographic/multispectral image of somebody is likely totally different than a printed photo and I'm sure, impossible to use to fool a well designed sensor.

Similarly, the use of gummi bears by high school students trying to get out of classes might fool some fingerprint sensors but likely not a high quality one.



Quote from: glarsson on Today at 09:56:25>Quote from: cdev on Today at 09:50:29
If you train a computer to recognize a face, it will also "recognize" a printed photo of that person.
No. Unless you train it to ignore the depth, temperature and movement information from the 3d camera.
The Samsung implementation will recognize a photo held in front of the 2d camera.
The Apple implementation will not recognize a photo held in front of the 3d camera.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline janoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3781
  • Country: de
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #33 on: September 17, 2017, 08:30:37 pm »
Info on the Apple depth camera - it is, as I have thought, the PrimeSense sensor, aka Kinect 1:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/17/16315510/iphone-x-notch-kinect-apple-primesense-microsoft
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #34 on: September 17, 2017, 10:03:25 pm »
If this camera does not detect heat - only the 3d nature of a viewed object then a styrofoam wig head with a wraparound version of somebody's photo printed on it might be "recognized" as that person.

I see the makings of a potentially great YouTube video here! Dave, you already have the makings of this video!
« Last Edit: September 17, 2017, 10:05:42 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #35 on: September 17, 2017, 10:12:12 pm »
If this camera does not detect heat - only the 3d nature of a viewed object then a styrofoam wig head with a wraparound version of somebody's photo printed on it might be "recognized" as that person.

I see the makings of a potentially great YouTube video here! Dave, you already have the makings of this video!
I think I mentioned this before, but similar technology on the Surface Pro devices could not be fooled by identical twins. That's quite an impressive feat, if you ask me.
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11341
  • Country: ch
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #36 on: September 18, 2017, 09:07:32 am »
If this camera does not detect heat - only the 3d nature of a viewed object then a styrofoam wig head with a wraparound version of somebody's photo printed on it might be "recognized" as that person.

I see the makings of a potentially great YouTube video here! Dave, you already have the makings of this video!
Dude... Watch. The. Keynote.  |O  |O

They talk about this...
 

Offline janoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3781
  • Country: de
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #37 on: September 18, 2017, 05:02:29 pm »
If this camera does not detect heat - only the 3d nature of a viewed object then a styrofoam wig head with a wraparound version of somebody's photo printed on it might be "recognized" as that person.

I see the makings of a potentially great YouTube video here! Dave, you already have the makings of this video!
Dude... Watch. The. Keynote.  |O  |O

They talk about this...

Tone it down, the keynote says actually very little about how it works.

Cdev is right. The "camera" (more accurately infrared camera and an IR projector, the rest doesn't really play a major role in the system) measures only depth and that is used to reconstruct the face. Similar things have been done with Kinect as well, including measurement of heart rate from the minuscule bulging of veins in your face (but that was Kinect 2 which doesn't have the PrimeSense system - Kinect 1 couldn't do it because of the low framerate, not necessarily a constraint that the Apple's system has). It certainly does not measure heat like a thermal camera (despite the BS heat image shown in the keynote)! The IR camera is only used to detect the dot pattern projected by the dot projector and that is used to calculate the shape. It is a basic structured light system, they just managed to miniaturize it using the PrimeSense IP and Apple's experience with building portable electronics. You don't even need any neural networks BS, only simple trigonometry to triangulate the point cloud and then reconstruct the 3D mesh from it.

If you want an explanation how this system works, there is a good basic video here:

It is the same method that has been used for the various 3D scanning apps available for Kinect and pretty much all structured light based 3D scanners (e.g. the cheap stuff based on a webcam + laser pointer with an object on a turntable).

So yes, that styrofoam head + photo printout attack is potentially plausible but not a very practical attack - if they train the system on the shape of the face, the fake head would have to be the exact duplicate of the victim's head. A generic foam head wouldn't work. Good luck obtaining something like that.

« Last Edit: September 18, 2017, 05:10:24 pm by janoc »
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #38 on: September 18, 2017, 07:22:50 pm »
Photogrammetry using something like VSFM can do that.

Actually, there are lots of tools that can do exactly that, create a super accurate point cloud and 3d model from a bunch of generic images.

Anybody who has been photographed enough times to have a corpus of photos likely has enough of their data online that an attacker could easily use it to make that 3d model.

For at least two decades people have been doing all sorts of cool stuff with photogrammetry and computers. Its not hard at all, just take a bunch of pictures of something, throw them all in a folder and the software does the work of creating a 3d reconstruction of it.

I have played around with it. 

Its not hard. You have to take a lot of images in a systematic way to get a model with no holes or artifacts. But it does work well.

Here is one possible application. Architecture. Somebody wants to build an addition onto their home but they dont have the original plans. They want an accurate 3d model of their home but they cant afford to hire a professional plan maker. So they do it via photogrammetry.

What do they do, they simply walk around and through it and take a huge number of photos from as many angles as possible and then use software like VSFM and CMVS to create a sparse point cloud and reconstruct a 3d model of it, both outside and inside.  Time expended, maybe an afternoon or so.. maybe even less once you get good at it.  A drone could likely automate the capture process and optimize the fly through and capture of both the exterior and the interior. 

Likewise with a person, even if there were no known photos of somebody online, when they were outside a drone could literally fly around that persons head even at a distance, take enough photos of them and zap, a computer could reconstruct a 3d model of them from that imagery.

Just as when you are making a panorama out of a series of images that overlap, each image can be used to stitch that one to the previous and next one. Then the software takes it one step further- extracting the geometry, It can then draw a texture over the shape. just as you do in your own mental map.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2017, 08:00:26 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11341
  • Country: ch
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #39 on: September 18, 2017, 07:54:20 pm »
If this camera does not detect heat - only the 3d nature of a viewed object then a styrofoam wig head with a wraparound version of somebody's photo printed on it might be "recognized" as that person.

I see the makings of a potentially great YouTube video here! Dave, you already have the makings of this video!
Dude... Watch. The. Keynote.  |O  |O

They talk about this...

Tone it down, the keynote says actually very little about how it works.

Cdev is right. The "camera" (more accurately infrared camera and an IR projector, the rest doesn't really play a major role in the system) measures only depth and that is used to reconstruct the face. Similar things have been done with Kinect as well, including measurement of heart rate from the minuscule bulging of veins in your face (but that was Kinect 2 which doesn't have the PrimeSense system - Kinect 1 couldn't do it because of the low framerate, not necessarily a constraint that the Apple's system has). It certainly does not measure heat like a thermal camera (despite the BS heat image shown in the keynote)! The IR camera is only used to detect the dot pattern projected by the dot projector and that is used to calculate the shape. It is a basic structured light system, they just managed to miniaturize it using the PrimeSense IP and Apple's experience with building portable electronics. You don't even need any neural networks BS, only simple trigonometry to triangulate the point cloud and then reconstruct the 3D mesh from it.

If you want an explanation how this system works, there is a good basic video here:

It is the same method that has been used for the various 3D scanning apps available for Kinect and pretty much all structured light based 3D scanners (e.g. the cheap stuff based on a webcam + laser pointer with an object on a turntable).

So yes, that styrofoam head + photo printout attack is potentially plausible but not a very practical attack - if they train the system on the shape of the face, the fake head would have to be the exact duplicate of the victim's head. A generic foam head wouldn't work. Good luck obtaining something like that.
My point was that not only would a generic head not work, the keynote expressly addresses even reproductions of actual persons' heads, namely that they had Hollywood FX artists prepare masks of them, and made sure it doesn't recognize those.
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #40 on: September 18, 2017, 08:09:06 pm »
This kind of model was being made commercially 20 years ago. Originally they used Lidar but now it can be done using ordinary photography or video as the source data used to create whats called a point cloud.

Of course "Hollywood Fx artists" - unless they had access to the persons facial geometry, could easily make a representation of somebody that looked like them but whose proportions would not be exact enough to relate to one another in the way a 3d model would mathematically. For that they need to use a computer and a corpus of person-identified photos, say from the iphoto or facebook or twitter or microsoft or google database, to make that model.

Computers are making it possible to save a lot of money in film production using photogrammetry and related technologies, in combination with motion capture.

Producers and directors can use different actors - make one actor look like somebody else, using motion capture in front of a green screen/chroma keyed background and photogrammetry derived models.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2017, 08:28:14 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline janoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3781
  • Country: de
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #41 on: September 18, 2017, 11:20:56 pm »
Photogrammetry using something like VSFM can do that.

Actually, there are lots of tools that can do exactly that, create a super accurate point cloud and 3d model from a bunch of generic images.

Anybody who has been photographed enough times to have a corpus of photos likely has enough of their data online that an attacker could easily use it to make that 3d model.

Um, nope. For that to work the images need to be taken with a calibrated camera (i.e. you need to know the focal length, the optic center and the distortion parameters of the lenses + the size of the sensor) and have enough common features so that you can relate them together. A few random photos of someone taken with unknown cameras and who knows how processed will not do (even having the EXIF information is not sufficient!) if you want a geometrically accurate (not only visually plausible - e.g. good enough for film) model.

A plausible looking 3D reconstruction is possible to generate using a neural network from a single image already. However I very much doubt that this would be enough to fool the FaceID, because the details won't be correct.

Anyhow, this is a rather pointless discussion - nobody is going to build a 3D model of your face out of foam so that they can unlock your iPhone. A mugger will rather force you to unlock it at knife/gunpoint and police can compel you to unlock it in many jurisdictions or you will risk prison.

The FaceID (together with all biometrics) IS NOT meant to be a replacement for a pass code. It is only a slightly more convenient replacement for screen unlocking (aka the old slide-to-unlock) or the fingerprint.

So even if the phone was unlockable with a printed photo it wouldn't matter - it is not really meant to be some sort of fool-proof security barrier! Apple is being very explicit about this.


« Last Edit: September 18, 2017, 11:40:09 pm by janoc »
 
The following users thanked this post: tooki

Offline janoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3781
  • Country: de
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #42 on: September 18, 2017, 11:35:50 pm »
My point was that not only would a generic head not work, the keynote expressly addresses even reproductions of actual persons' heads, namely that they had Hollywood FX artists prepare masks of them, and made sure it doesn't recognize those.

Right, I think there you are correct. Unless the facial features are correct down to ~1mm (it is unlikely the system can resolve much finer details that this - it would need huge resolution and processing power => poor battery life), it most likely won't work. 

Film grade masks are never going to be that accurate - they only need to be visually similar, not geometrically identical to work. Moreover masks are never 100% rigid, so the dimensions e.g. between eyes or the distance between nostrils and the corners of the mouth won't match due to stretching.

Probably the only way to obtain a sufficiently accurate model would be to make a perfect cast of someone's head or a 3D scan and then fabricate it e.g. using a professional 3D printer - but that still fools only the geometry test.

It is rather trivial to algorithmically check that there is heartbeat (pulsing veins modulate the facial dimensions with a periodic signal) and that the eyes blink. I am pretty sure Apple is checking basic things like that. So I am not too worried about an attack like this. Barring a fatal bug/oversight in the implementation it is more than good enough for the intended purpose - which is unlocking the phone (aka replacing the slide-to-unlock/fingerprint). It is actually more secure than the fingerprint because those are much easier to capture and fake, fooling the commonly available scanners.

People who care about their data use a passcode/password instead.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2017, 11:41:53 pm by janoc »
 
The following users thanked this post: tooki

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #43 on: September 18, 2017, 11:41:47 pm »
Um, nope. For that to work the images need to be taken with a calibrated camera (i.e. you need to know the focal length, the optic center and the distortion parameters of the lenses + the size of the sensor) and have enough common features so that you can relate them together. A few random photos of someone taken with unknown cameras and who knows how processed will not do (even having the EXIF information is not sufficient!) if you want an accurate (not only visually plausible - e.g. good enough for film) model.

A plausible looking 3D reconstruction is possible to generate using a neural network from a single image already. However I very much doubt that this would be enough to fool the FaceID, because the details won't be correct.

Anyhow, this is a rather pointless discussion - nobody is going to build a 3D model of your face out of foam so that they can unlock your iPhone. A mugger will rather force you to unlock it at knife/gunpoint and police can compel you to unlock it in many jurisdictions or you will risk prison.

The FaceID IS NOT meant to be a replacement for a pass code. It is only a slightly more convenient replacement for screen unlocking (aka the old slide-to-unlock) or the fingerprint.

So even if the phone was unlockable with a printed photo it wouldn't matter - it is not really meant to be some sort of fool-proof security barrier! Apple is being very explicit about this.
How do you figure this is not meant to replace a pass code? It certainly seems to be. The finger print sensor was meant to be a quick and easy replacement for the pass code and this is a replacement of the finger print sensor. Apple explicitly saying it's not meant to be a fool proof security barrier is simple mitigation for any liability issues.

Also, police is luckily only able to compel people in a few places, and that's highly controversial.
 

Offline Beamin

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1567
  • Country: us
  • If you think my Boobs are big you should see my ba
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #44 on: September 18, 2017, 11:47:13 pm »
Does anyone else not like the idea of some corporation having your picture as well as your GPS location your texts email contacts and browser history? Mix that with a consumer report and a credit report and I would imagine with all that you could make a psychological profile of someone that was really spot on.

Then NSA gets it. Then we have an administration that looks for all the people that disagree with it. Then its dec 31st 1983...  :scared:
Max characters: 300; characters remaining: 191
Images in your signature must be no greater than 500x25 pixels
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #45 on: September 18, 2017, 11:53:53 pm »
Does anyone else not like the idea of some corporation having your picture as well as your GPS location your texts email contacts and browser history? Mix that with a consumer report and a credit report and I would imagine with all that you could make a psychological profile of someone that was really spot on.

Then NSA gets it. Then we have an administration that looks for all the people that disagree with it. Then its dec 31st 1983...  :scared:
Guess what? With the data most of us surrender voluntary or by law, eerily accurate profiles can be, and already are being built. There are many examples of algorithms predicting people's behaviour and wishes more accurately than those people can do themselves already, and this is only the start.

One neat example would be the girl that got flyers in the mail about pregnancy related stuff. She had hidden that information from her father, but looking at her purchasing information, the store had figured it out. That's an example now five years old, when profiling was in its infancy compared to today.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-target-exposed-a-teen-girls-pregnancy-2012-2
 

Offline janoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3781
  • Country: de
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #46 on: September 18, 2017, 11:57:46 pm »
How do you figure this is not meant to replace a pass code? It certainly seems to be. The finger print sensor was meant to be a quick and easy replacement for the pass code and this is a replacement of the finger print sensor. Apple explicitly saying it's not meant to be a fool proof security barrier is simple mitigation for any liability issues.

Also, police is luckily only able to compel people in a few places, and that's highly controversial.

No, it is not simply a liability issue. Biometrics, be it a fingerprint, retina scan or geometric configuration of your face are good to identify you because they are for all practical reasons unique - authentication.

However, they are horrible as a password - authorization. Something acting as a password must be by definition a secret known only to the people authorized to access the protected information. Otherwise there is no need for a password if everyone knows it.

That's a problem with biometrics. We are "leaking" biometric information everywhere we go - every object we touch, every hair we lose (DNA), ever photograph or video that is taken of us. That's like having a few buckets with copies of your house keys made and then leaving them everywhere with a note containing your address. Worse, the house locks (or passwords) can be changed. Your biomarkers are with you for life and the moment they are public, you are screwed if you use them as a password.

So if someone uses biometrics alone as a mean of access control for some feature or authorization of some operation, they are morons and will get compromised sooner or later. This is why Apple is explicit about this.

If you choose to use FaceID or fingerprint to unlock the phone instead of a password you are prioritizing convenience over security. And Apple is telling you as much. Ignore at your own peril.

 

Offline janoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3781
  • Country: de
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #47 on: September 19, 2017, 12:01:42 am »
Does anyone else not like the idea of some corporation having your picture as well as your GPS location your texts email contacts and browser history? Mix that with a consumer report and a credit report and I would imagine with all that you could make a psychological profile of someone that was really spot on.

Then NSA gets it. Then we have an administration that looks for all the people that disagree with it. Then its dec 31st 1983...  :scared:

Do you have a smartphone, Beamin? If you do, then you better throw it away. All this data you are describing is available to both Google (if you have an Android phone) and Apple (if you are iPhone user). And probably ton of other companies that have some form of "telemetry" in almost every app you have installed.

Including the purchasing information and credit reports (in the countries that use those). Seriously, NSA probably couldn't care less about it but Google has built their entire business model on selling this information (that we voluntarily give them!) to advertisers.

 

Offline Beamin

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1567
  • Country: us
  • If you think my Boobs are big you should see my ba
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #48 on: September 19, 2017, 12:07:30 am »
Does anyone else not like the idea of some corporation having your picture as well as your GPS location your texts email contacts and browser history? Mix that with a consumer report and a credit report and I would imagine with all that you could make a psychological profile of someone that was really spot on.

Then NSA gets it. Then we have an administration that looks for all the people that disagree with it. Then its dec 31st 1983...  :scared:

Do you have a smartphone, Beamin? If you do, then you better throw it away. All this data you are describing is available to both Google (if you have an Android phone) and Apple (if you are iPhone user). And probably ton of other companies that have some form of "telemetry" in almost every app you have installed.

Including the purchasing information and credit reports (in the countries that use those). Seriously, NSA probably couldn't care less about it but Google has built their entire business model on selling this information (that we voluntarily give them!) to advertisers.
I'm aware of this and I don't like it. The few apps I do use are closed as soon as I am done using them and I never will download "Free" apps where in exchange to play candy crush you are giving away all your personal info. I have found the best way to combat this is not to try and avoid it but rather put out a lot of misinformation. Since I can't stop my family from using face book I made several accounts under my name. They have pictures and everything they are close to my actual info but all the important parts are not quite right. Much harder to figure out which one is real when you don't know there are fakes and certainly not worth the effort of trying.
Max characters: 300; characters remaining: 191
Images in your signature must be no greater than 500x25 pixels
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11341
  • Country: ch
Re: Might the iPhone X open with a photograph of your face?
« Reply #49 on: September 19, 2017, 12:28:09 am »
The FaceID IS NOT meant to be a replacement for a pass code. It is only a slightly more convenient replacement for screen unlocking (aka the old slide-to-unlock) or the fingerprint.

So even if the phone was unlockable with a printed photo it wouldn't matter - it is not really meant to be some sort of fool-proof security barrier! Apple is being very explicit about this.
How do you figure this is not meant to replace a pass code? It certainly seems to be. The finger print sensor was meant to be a quick and easy replacement for the pass code and this is a replacement of the finger print sensor. Apple explicitly saying it's not meant to be a fool proof security barrier is simple mitigation for any liability issues.
As I explained in a long comment above, the primary motivator for Touch ID (and thus now Face ID) was the people who used no passcode at all, despite the hoops you have to jump through to configure an iPhone to use no passcode. But indeed, nobody is claiming that Touch ID and Face ID are infallible, only that they're pretty decent. Which they are. Again, Apple is specifying a 1 in 50000 false positive rate for Touch ID, and 1 in 1 million for Face ID (except for close relations, with an unspecified lower accuracy). Combined with the limits on failed biometric authentication attempts (5 for Touch ID, 2 for Face ID) before the passcode is demanded, either one is still significantly more secure than a 4-digit passcode.

Does anyone else not like the idea of some corporation having your picture as well as your GPS location your texts email contacts and browser history? Mix that with a consumer report and a credit report and I would imagine with all that you could make a psychological profile of someone that was really spot on.

Then NSA gets it. Then we have an administration that looks for all the people that disagree with it. Then its dec 31st 1983...  :scared:

Do you have a smartphone, Beamin? If you do, then you better throw it away. All this data you are describing is available to both Google (if you have an Android phone) and Apple (if you are iPhone user). And probably ton of other companies that have some form of "telemetry" in almost every app you have installed.

Including the purchasing information and credit reports (in the countries that use those). Seriously, NSA probably couldn't care less about it but Google has built their entire business model on selling this information (that we voluntarily give them!) to advertisers.


Apple does not have that information, actually. They say they don't collect it, and with the scrutiny Apple gets from its haters, if Apple was sending it back contrary to its claims, somebody would have called them out on it by now. On the contrary, Apple is building a reputation as the only major IT vendor to actively fight for user privacy, to the extent of re-engineering its products to make it impossible for Apple to access user data, fighting the US government on decryption, etc. Remember, Apple doesn't make its money on selling user data and ad revenue, they're actively fighting that...

Edit: P.S. Look into Apple's research on "differential privacy", a method of aggregating data while making it mathematically impossible to identify a specific user or even seeing their data.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2017, 12:31:57 am by tooki »
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf