• spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This has always been my biggest concern with biometrics. They don’t need your password, they need your body part.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      This is true, but not exactly for most consumer electronics in most realistic use cases. Most biometric systems do not use your biometrics for the actual security, it’s simply used as a shortcut so you don’t have to enter the password every time.

      This is why when you turn on your phone or computer the first time you must enter the full password/passcode and cannot use biometrics. What happens then is the biometric system stores your passcode internally and basically enters it for you from that point on until the phone is turned off, the internal timer expires to require it to be entered manually, usually once a day or so, or if you enable the lockdown function manually it will also require the passcode and not work with biometrics.

      Given the quick slide into a police state we seem to live in now, I would recommend learning how to activate lockdown mode on your devices and to get in the habit of enabling it whenever law enforcement are nearby.

      Judges have forced people to provide biometric information and to unlock devices with face or fingerprint sensors… But they cannot physically force you to disclose a passcode.