Does Facial Recognition Make Us Feel Secure?

Facial recognition is something that we are all used to by now. Our faces get scanned in various situations during our day-to-day life. For example, many countries have machines set up in their aiports which take pictures of us in order to keep track of our identity and who is entering and leaving the country. You may have had a similar experience when on a night out. Many nightclubs within the UK scan your ID and also take a picture of you for their record of who is entering their establishment. These pictures of our faces are taken to enhance security, so should anything go wrong, it would be easy to identify who was present at the time. Consequently, facial recognition on phones should make us feel like our personal information and content is secure. However, is this really the case? 

The new additions for Apple and Samsung phones, both offer facial recognition on their devices as a means of security. The concept is that the phones are meant to automatically recognise you and then unlock themselves. Therefore, the aim is to create efficiency for its users and above all to provide security. Even though these seem to be vital aspects for mobile phone users nowadays, facial recognition is a topic that is up for discussion and brings about mixed feelings amongst those in the tech community.

In terms of security, facial recognition was meant to introduce a much more secure way of unlocking phones and keeping its content safe. This may have been because of the tainted reputation of fingerprint scanning on phones after a "well-known German hacker - Starbug was able to bypass fingerprint protection" on a previous iPhone. Yet, it has been reported that the new iPhone X can be hacked, as shown by a Vietnamese cyber-security firm and surprisingly (or not) a 10 year old. 

Which begs the question - does the fact that facial recognition is convenient take away from the fact that it can easily be hacked and quite simply creeps some of us out too? Facial recognition creates fears around not only security but privacy also. Many experts have debated the privacy issues that surround the new facial recognition aspect on new devices, and it would seem that the main issue revolves around third parties getting hold of our facial data. According to macrumors.com "this means that developers who want to use the iPhone X's front-facing camera can get a "rough map" of the user's face, as well as a "stream of more than 50 kinds of facial expressions.' As a result, it may be that facial recognition technology is not as secure as we would like it to be. However, as it becomes more popular and prevalent within our society, facial recognition becomes more controversial.