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Silly smartphone security
First, sheer idiocy. A lot of people don't lock their smartphones, a lot of those that do use only a four digit PIN. On my iPhone, I've enabled alphanumeric pass codes. If you're only using four numbers, you've limited your phone to 10,000 possible combinations. I'm assuming Android phones can be set to wipe themselves after X number of failed attempts to enter the correct passcode, but again, that assumes it's enabled. If you take those same four characters and enable alphanumeric passcodes (numbers and letters and punctuation), you greatly increase that number. Using just numbers and letters, not even shifted case, those four characters go from ten raised to the 4th power to 36 raised to the 4th, or 1.68 million combinations. Add in lower case and all of the punctuation symbols on the standard keyboard, and it goes to 96 to the 4th, or 78 million combinations. Add just one digit to your passcode and the number of possible combinations jumps to 7.34 billion.
Motorola wants to simplify that. There's a new tech coming along called Near Field Communications, or NFC. Mostly you see it in these frequent buyer fobs at gas stations where you wave a little piece of plastic at the pump and it charges it to your card. Well, you can do that with certain phones and certain vendors. Motorola has developed a device called the Skip, which you'd clip on to your belt or whatever, and to unlock your phone you'd touch it to the device and *poof*, your phone is unlocked.
So now when you're being robbed, people will also tear random items off of your clothing. And if you're arrested, your fob will be seized and the police will say the phone was unlocked so they had a little stroll, rather than having to get a warrant to search a locked phone.
This is a really stupid idea, and I don't see it lasting long. But I could be wrong. You get three to a set, so they're anticipating you losing them.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/83663
Motorola wants to simplify that. There's a new tech coming along called Near Field Communications, or NFC. Mostly you see it in these frequent buyer fobs at gas stations where you wave a little piece of plastic at the pump and it charges it to your card. Well, you can do that with certain phones and certain vendors. Motorola has developed a device called the Skip, which you'd clip on to your belt or whatever, and to unlock your phone you'd touch it to the device and *poof*, your phone is unlocked.
So now when you're being robbed, people will also tear random items off of your clothing. And if you're arrested, your fob will be seized and the police will say the phone was unlocked so they had a little stroll, rather than having to get a warrant to search a locked phone.
This is a really stupid idea, and I don't see it lasting long. But I could be wrong. You get three to a set, so they're anticipating you losing them.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/83663
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