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Stop Using Your Face or Thumb to Unlock Your Phone
(gizmodo.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
FYI Androids have a feature for this. If you are ever forced to interact with a cop you can press the side button and volume up(might be different on other phones) to select lockdown which will force your phone to only be opened with the password. Its gross that we need this feature, but now you know.
iPhones do this too. Hold the lock and volume down button until your phone buzzes, to get to the SOS/reboot screen. Once that screen is activated, it’ll disable biometrics until the passcode is entered.
You can even take photos/videos with the locked phone, and the recordings won’t be able to be deleted from your iCloud until the passcode is entered. Handy for recording cops. Cuz even if they take your phone and delete the recording, it’ll still sit in your “Recently Deleted” for 30 days. And while the phone is locked, they can’t access that Recently Deleted folder to permanently wipe it. So you can just access your iCloud account from any computer and recover the “deleted” footage.
iPhones also have this feature, for a long time now:
https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/keep-law-enforcement-out-your-iphone-your-privacy-intact-0194999/
Rather irresponsible of the article to not point out these features on Android and iPhone. Did a cop or government official write that article?
Most likely just a written with little real tech experience.
Yeah, but I want a combo that force starts the feature. I want to pull out my phone and be able to blind start it, not stare at my screen to select the correct thing.
Same, but this is our only option unfortunately.
I have Button Mapper trigger a Tasker task that locks my phone when I hold the volume down button, for some reason Button Mapper's lock doesn't trigger a lockdown.
(Tap and hold still lowers the volume)
It's good that they have this, but there are a lot of situations involving cops where it's not going to be safe to stick your hand in your pocket. I'll just leave the biometrics off on my devices.
Edit: Maybe:
You can instead hold the power button for 1 second to open the same menu. Feels easier to me.
Usually that just launches the Google Assistant on most new phones.
Ah, I don't use that on my Pixel 7 Pro, so it gives the old menu.
Jesus christ this explains why occasionally I'll pull my phone out of my pocket and it forces me to input the pin rather than the thumb print. It's just one of those mildly annoying things that you wonder about but don't think about enough to search for the answer.
Your situation is more likely to be caused by Android's system to make sure you don't forget your pin. It has a number of unlocks (and a length of time) before it forces you to do the code.
Great contribution.