Face ID might be the Apple iPhone X’s new secure facial recognition feature, replacing the Touch ID, but it doesn’t look like the risk has paid off. A recent video which has gone viral, shows a 10-year old boy unlocking his mother’s iPhone X, hinting that family members who resemble similar features might be able to hack the system.
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In the video, you can see the mother explaining that despite setting up the facial recognition feature for herself, her son was able to pick up the device and unlock it himself. In conversation with WIRED, parents Attaullah Malik and Sana Sherwani said that they were shocked when this happened while their son thought it was hilarious. Malik pointed out that it raises privacy concerns. As the duo constantly text all the time, there might be something they don’t want him to see. Sherwani is now forced to delete her texts when there's something she doesn’t want her son to look at.
In a post shared on LinkedIn, Attaullah Malik says, “Apparently, TrueDepth camera’s depth map of my wife’s face, which was created by projecting and analyzing over 30,000 dots, wasn’t accurate enough as it worked with my 10-year-old son. He doesn’t fall under the “twins” exception and has a big age difference compared to my wife. His face is smaller than my wife’s face and the geometry of their faces don’t match, at least to human eyes. Also, the additional neural network present in iPhone X that’s trained to spot and resist spoofing doesn’t work as intended in this scenario.”
At the moment, there is word from Apple on this matter.
