Smartphones are everywhere these days. Almost every man, woman and child has a smartphone in their pocket at all times. We have come to rely heavily on these tiny devices as our calculators, sources of entertainment and our connections to the outside world. And as these devices become so much more personal, they also become prime targets for thieves and hackers. Those malicious muggers have come up with some incredibly clever ways to hack our most personal information by figuring out our four -digit passcodes and alphanumeric passwords. However, smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung have come up with a way around this: fingerprint scanners. And for several years, these fingerprint scanners have helped keep our devices safe, but now, it seems as if we are moving towards a new trend in smartphone security: facial recognition.
I recently wrote a blog on how fingerprint scanners are not actually as safe as we believe. It seems as though smartphone manufacturers are taking this to heart and coming up with innovative new ways to scan our faces as the next level of security. The most recent phone to incorporate facial scanning technology is the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+. The technology is as straightforward as it sounds. You simply hold the phone up to your face and the phone’s camera reads your facial patterns and unlocks your phone. Unfortunately, the S8 and S8+ have been reported to have been fooled by a photo of its user’s face, which raises some concern for the legitimacy of the feature.
Even with this minor setback, that hasn’t stopped other smartphone manufacturers to work on implementing the same feature on their devices. For example, the highly-anticipated iPhone 8 is rumored to feature facial recognition technology as a means of securing the device. Rumors suggest that, in order to avoid a similar Galaxy S8/S8+ flaw, Apple is investing in 3D facial recognition that will be able to determine the depth of a face, as well as its two-dimensional characteristics.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe that technology companies should be focused on using facial recognition? Do you think fingerprint scanners are better? Before you answer, remember that fingerprint scanners were met with similar skepticism when they first hit the market. And once Apple had used it on the iPhone 5S, the technology had been given a certain amount of legitimacy. Could the same be happening for facial recognition? Only time will tell.