Android ‘face unlock’: could do better
Posted on November 17, 2011 by Nik Stanbridge
The Android ‘face unlock’ feature of the new Ice-Cream Sandwich OS isn’t going to do the biometrics industry any favours. I don’t think it’s being presented as a serious biometric identity verification solution to the securing of the device, but that’s not how it will be perceived and discussed. And that’s what’s important.
While it’s not being touted as a security feature, it is accessed from the Security menu on the device. It isn’t touted as a ‘biometric’ but you do have to ‘enroll’ by pointing the camera at your face so that it knows who to verify as being you and then hopefully let in (to the exclusion of anyone else).
But the enrollment model of your face, the biometric, is very weak, being based on only one scan of your face – and that’s the root of the problem. It does make it very fast, but also very inaccurate – as has been discovered and blogged about. So all that’s been talked about is how inaccurate it is, and that it can be spoofed with a simple picture of you that anyone can obtain.
So not secure at all. And that’s the takeaway – here’s yet another biometric solution that doesn’t work. So yet another case where we have to explain that this isn’t how it’s done… it’s just a fun gimmick.
Come and talk to us here at VoiceVault about voice biometric solutions. We’ll show you how it’s done.
2 Comments
The Android face unlock sounds like a bad idea. If it isn’t truly secure, why would they want anyone using it? I guess people think it’s cool.
Gaurav said:
Hi Nik
I follow your blog and i find it very interesting. I work for a bank in the US and we are currently exploring ways for voice recignition or other biometric methods of securing our smartphone apps. Do you have any case study you could share.
Thanks
Gaurav