What’s to stop someone holding our phones in front of our faces to force it to unlock using facial recognition? One of the ways companies like Apple have gotten around the issue is that users need to be looking into the camera as a way to prove that they are the ones actively trying to unlock the device.
However, it seems that attention can be faked. This is according to a recent report from Vice in which apparently over in the city of Nanning, China, a man surnamed Huang forced open his sleeping ex-girlfriend’s eyelids to unlock her phone and to transfer $24,000 from her digital wallet into his.
According to the report, Huang visited his ex-girlfriend’s house last December claiming to want to return her some money he borrowed while they were dating. His ex-girlfriend was sick at that time so Huang prepared food and cold medicine, and after she fell asleep, Huang put her finger on her phone to unlock it and then lifted her eyelids to authenticate the money transfer using the Alipay app.
The boyfriend then fled to another city where he used the money for his living expenses and to cover his gambling debts. Police eventually caught up to him where he was then arrested earlier this year in April.
Filed in . Read more about China, Privacy, Security and Social Hit. Source: vice