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Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

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Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#121
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mom? I have a small child that's been coming up to me with my phone and trying to nonchalantly guide my finger to unlock it since she was 4. She's never done it in my sleep (that I know of), but I don't for a second doubt she'd be able to do it if she was motivated to.

As an upcoming parent, these are the things that scare me. Where my kids start exhibiting what look disturbingly like addictive behaviours. Is this just how kids naturally are, or are screens just so compelling? I remember loving the TV as a kid but recall that somehow, magically, my parents kept me off it outside TV hours without use of a password. I need to figure out that secret before its too late!

Not a parent, and I don't play one on TV, but here's an idea I just had. Why not just get a device with horrible battery life, and tell the kids you can't use it while it charges? I know kids compare how restrictive their parents are all the time ("my dad lets me do x", "my mom only lets me use the tablet for an hour!") but I don't think they compare battery life of devices. And I really doubt any kid would think their parents are secretly controlling the battery life either. Suddenly, you're on their side, and the conversation shifts.

Before: "Daddy, give me the tablet! Now!"

After: "Daddy, the tablet's out of batteries, what should we do?" "Oh, let's go outside and play together!

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#122
I disabled the iPhone feature that unlocks my phone with my thumbprint and changed it to an alphanumeric password of 20 characters. That feature has always been hit or miss for me anyway. Now it's harder for me to unlock my phone, which has a bonus side-effect of making me use it less often.

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#123
post #118
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish my tech arms race with my parents had been simple...I had to socially engineer my dad into logging into the router on my desktop(no keylogger, just firefox password saving) so I could bypass whatever he was doing to cut me off at midnight.

My solution was much more elegant: spoof his MAC address.

Yeah, one thing he did was MAC filter me. But for awhile he was changing the hidden ssid by one letter. I was so happy to discover that.

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. In my opinion, this isn't a problem that needs solving. I bet with thumbprint security, money is more secure from house hooligans than it was when held in a wallet.

Wallets hold a small amount of money compared to the potential life savings accessible with a phone and thumbprint. Getting robbed turns from "Give me your wallet or I'll shoot/stab you" to "Give me your phone and access or I'll shoot/stab you."

>life savings

Unlikely given anti-fraud systems.

And ordered physical goods can almost often be returned. Digital purchases canceled. I don't doubt one can come up with a corner case somewhere but major financial transactions do tend to have checks built in.

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly cringe at the argument I quoted because it is often misapplied due to how we have historically misapplied passwords. A username is an identity. Historically due to the difficulty of verifying identities online, we have used passwords as a way to do so. And when all we need to do is verify an identity or control basic access levels (the bathroom lock!), a fingerprint is absolutely good enough. But a password…

Identity Authentication Authority I deal with this in my industry (telecommunications). Just because you've provided proof of identity (eg your phone number, account number), there are still things you're not allowed to do until you've authenticated your identity--and the system determines your authority, to perform an action. This is accomplished through a password, a PIN, etc. On a phone, it's an interesting shift…

Here's my take on the authentication vs authorization distinction. Authentication is the verification of identity. Authorization is the verification of permission (authority) to perform an action. The two are often related, but need not be.

For example, most phone manufacturers think that the owner of a phone should always have permission to perform any action on the phone, so as long as they can authenticate the person holding the phone, they can authorize them to do anything. In this case, authentication => authorization.

Contrast this with OAuth, which it seems most people don't understand well. OAuth is a mechanism for authorizing people other than yourself to perform actions on your behalf, e.g. a third party application to post on your Facebook wall. In this case, authorization !=> authentication.

However, sometimes third-party applications don't care about performing actions on your behalf. They work on the assumption that only the owner of the account could authorize an OAuth token to give back to them, so they use other OAuth providers as authentication, e.g. login via Facebook. So in this case, authorization => authentication.

Another example is accessing secret files at a company. A person might be authorized to view the files but only from a secure device. In this case, authentication is required but not sufficient for authorization. In this case, authentication !=> authorization.

In the case of payment via phone, you need authorization. Authentication can be one factor in the authorization process, but clearly its not sufficient because the authorizing party could be asleep and therefore unaware of the transaction. Phone manufacturers might want to look at risk-based escalation -- requiring more factors for some applications, or as the sum of money increases, or perhaps even based on time of day.

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#126
Do the fingerprint readers on phones check if there is a pulse?

I believe that most biometric readers for security (e.g., offices and such) look for a pulse or other indicator so using a severed body-part would not work. Always annoys me when I see that done in movies.

(One office I worked in had fingerprint access. The bathrooms were outside the secured area, and I soon got into the habit of rubbing my hands together after washing to warm them up, as a cold finger wouldn't read.)

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chopping off your thumb is only in movies, where logic barely exists. In real life, you can cancel your funds and reverse their fraudulent transactions.

How're you gonna do that without thumbs?

"Ok Google, call the bank..."

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#128
post #110
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many friends of mine disabled that feature right after the story about someone's wife unlocked it while he was asleep. That can be orders of magnitude more expensive than $250, in one touch.

Anyone for whom this is a concern should probably consider divorce.

And... why? Which profit do you get from divorce that covers all economic and moral expenses (let's consider family with children)?

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are hiding stuff from your spouse you have larger issues that you should acknowledge and address. With regards to the article parents needs to disable in app purchases on any device a child can reasonably be expected to get access too

You could hide stuff from your spouse for many good and bad reasons. Maybe you are preparing a surprise gift and you took photos. Maybe your spouse has a bad spending habit and will ruin the both of you, so you hide the other bank account. Maybe your spouse is abusive and is threatening to leave you at any moment, so you hide money to get ready for that day. Maybe your spouse parents are calling you regularly to see…

maybe you're questioning sexuality and aren't sure how to discuss it with your super born again religious wife.

(I saw this come up in a Facebook group a few months ago)

Re: Child uses sleeping mom's thumbprint to buy $250 worth of Pokémon toys

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chopping off your thumb is only in movies, where logic barely exists. In real life, you can cancel your funds and reverse their fraudulent transactions.

How're you gonna do that without thumbs?

always register another finger with Touch ID.

or a toe. i got bored and tried a toe. it worked. but i'm not putting my feet on my iPhone again.

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