Over the last few years, mobile phone providers have worked hard on biometrics, and these are definitely a great security measure when it comes to keeping your phone safe. The first to arrive was fingerprint technology. However, this has now been usurped by face recognition which has become incredibly popular in all manner of areas. Many companies like Apple offer Face ID on all of their newer devices, and many Android-based technology companies such as Samsung have also gone down the same route. It is still possible to purchase handsets that do not utilise Face ID, but before you dismiss it as an intrusion, let’s take a closer look at how it’s being used.
General Security
At the most basic level, facial recognition is being used to ensure your handset is secure. It can only be unlocked when you are in possession of it and looking at the screen. Of course, it is not entirely infallible, it has been known to fail with identical twins, for example, but it’s certainly an easy and secure method for most of us. Wearing any kind of covering on the face tends to render it useless, and for that purpose, generally, most phones recommend setting up a passcode that can be triggered if the face ID fails. It is popular because it’s fast, you pick up your phone and look at the screen, and it’s ready to go. You don’t have to unlock it with the passcode, there’s no way someone can see you and your face and copy it as they could with a passcode, and it’s convenient, which is definitely a factor in the modern world.
How Does It Work?
If you have ever set up a phone with facial recognition, you will know that it involves spending a few minutes looking at the screen with your face positioned within a frame. The on-screen instructions will tell you to gently rotate your face and turn it from side to side so that the camera can get images from all angles to create a complete picture for reference purposes. Apple has Face ID, which is considered to be perhaps the most secure facial recognition system, and it uses 30,000 points on your face using infrared cameras, depth sensors and dot projection to create the perfect map. Once set up, when you look at your phone to unlock it, the handset technology analyses your face, it looks at where your eyes are, how wide your nose is, etc. and then takes all of these features in combination to ascertain whether it is you trying to unlock the handset. They say, identical twins aside, the chances of someone randomly picking up your handset and being able to use it with a face ID that matches your own is one in a million.
Gaining in Popularity
It wasn’t that long ago that science fiction was the only place you would see things like facial recognition, with the bad guys in movies triggering bank locks with retinal scans, for example. However, technology has certainly moved on, and we are now able to genuinely make use of this because it is so secure. So, not only can you unlock your handset by using facial recognition, but you will find that many apps also allow this same process to unlock or log in to their programs. Online banking, for example, is another place that you might discover facial recognition; if you download your banking app once you have set up your security details and they have confirmed your identity, you can set up your facial recognition to kick in rather than having to enter passwords or answers to security questions.
Apple Pay is another app that will allow facial recognition to confirm identity so that you can hold your handset over the chip and pin reader, and by looking at the screen, authorise a payment. It is undoubtedly more secure than contactless because, in theory, all that is required for contactless payment is the bank card. At the point of sale, no further identity checks are carried out; a retailer would simply allow a contactless payment to take place. This does leave it open to fraud, and although limits are in place to ensure that big money cannot be stolen, it could still be fraudulently used before anyone is aware. On the mobile phone, the fact that a face ID is required makes it a lot safer and means you do not need to take your contactless card outside your property, where it is technically much more secure.
The Future
It is getting easier for technology to stay two steps ahead of hackers; we already have two-factor authentication, which adds an extra layer of security to anything you do. But if more companies use face ID to authorise various apps, it will make it much harder for people to have their data stolen. In the future, it certainly seems likely that many more industries will get on board; casinos, for example, are already using face identification not only to provide security for transactions but to identify players that they don’t want using their facilities. Face ID could also be used to verify our identity, whereas the old process of photocopying and authenticating passports and birth certificates is time-consuming. This could speed up the process and ensure that someone is who they say they are.
