Saturday, June 30, 2012

Liveness Check added to Jelly Bean Face Unlock security feature


We all remember how cool the new Face Unlock feature was for Android 4.o Ice Cream Sandwich when it was announced a while back. Today it’s still a nifty trick to show off to your iPhone buddies or at parties, but we all know that it’s far from foolproof. The fact that one could just simply use a still photo of the phone owner to access all their content was a little disappointing and relegated this security feature to basic social entertainment.
Well Google listened to the constructive criticism and updated Face Unlock with their new ‘Liveness Check‘ function for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean devices. Liveness Check will wait for the phone owner to blink before proceeding to unlock the phone.
Now I know some of you are going to go out on the highest tree limb and say that someone could just present a video of the phone owner to access the forbidden. Sure, I guess that’s true but how many of you actually have videos of people that are simply looking directly into the camera. If you have that intimate of a video, it’s probably safe to assume that you are close enough to the person that the Face Unlock is not intended for you in the first place.
So all in all, I think Liveness Check is a great additional security measure taken by Google to further protect Android user content.

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