I always thought it would be great if Apple allowed a duress iPhone faceid (say, you making a certain face) that could be used to erase the phone.
PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
231–240 of 358 posts
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#232Just like how ancient games and screen savers had a “Boss Mode” shortcut that showed a fake screenshot of Excel or whatever, all modern devices should have an “Allow limited or fake access to someone else to avoid the socially awkward situation of saying No” option.
Call it Duress/Panic/Boss/Jealous Boy//Girlfriend/Puritan Family Mode or whatever.
iOS has something called Guided Access which sorta helps a little bit but is very obvious to the other party.
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#233What does "PAM" mean?
Pluggable Authentication Module
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
On linux distros, at least before wayland, it was easy to make your account hidden from the gdm chooser (e.g. by putting it in a different group). Then you could setup a dummy account that doesn't have too much of interest in it. Combined with pam crypto to encrypt your home on login, the result is something that is reasonably private against casual inspection. I used to use this back when I couldn't afford to travel…
> Forensics agent pulls and mounts hard drive > Agent sees /home/hiddenuser > Government seeks search warrant for content > DA demonstrates recent knowledge/use of /home/hiddenuser > Judge holds you in contempt until you provide encryption keys
> Forensics agent pulls and mounts hard drive
> Agent sees /home/hiddenuser
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#235What does "PAM" mean?
[deleted]
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd always assumed (UK) that 9 was a deliberate choice to make it easier to dial the emergency number, 999, because you can just mash 9 until something happens. I guess if it's the same number in all other countries who have a range of emergency numbers, then that might not be the reason.
My working theory is that in old times phones had rotary dial instead of key pad. Number 1 was the longest to dial, 9 was the shortest (as I remember from childhood days). Thus, fastest way to dial 3 digit code was to use numbers with as much as 9 as possible (997,998,999).
I would add that 911 is a "queer" choice (for rotary phones), in other countries the emergency numbers are lowish numbers, in Italy 112 or 113 (or 115), and there are several records in the past of people managing to "dial" them by quickly pushing and releasing the hook switch.
There was another reason for this as it was common, many, many years ago, to restrict the possibility to make phone calls by using a little lock on the dial, like this:
https://www.ebay.it/itm/402554995319?hash=item5dba25c277:g:~...
it was placed on the #3 hole, so that you could dial 112 or 113 even when the lock was on.
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd always assumed (UK) that 9 was a deliberate choice to make it easier to dial the emergency number, 999, because you can just mash 9 until something happens. I guess if it's the same number in all other countries who have a range of emergency numbers, then that might not be the reason.
My working theory is that in old times phones had rotary dial instead of key pad. Number 1 was the longest to dial, 9 was the shortest (as I remember from childhood days). Thus, fastest way to dial 3 digit code was to use numbers with as much as 9 as possible (997,998,999).
I heard a very interesting explanation (on BBC R4) of the reason for choosing 9 (one of the slowest numbers to dial), rather than 1 (the quickest).
The old overhead telephone lines could knock against each other in the wind, producing a pulse which (to the system) appeared to be a 1. This could easily happen three times in a row, resulting in an unwanted call to the emergency services.
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does anyone else have any ideas for how to authenticate a BigCorp caller whose corporate policies do not allow them to provide any account information to the people they are calling? I mean, it's really their problem, isn't it? If you need something from them, call their customer line and ask. If they need something from you, then they'll figure it out. I had a financial institution call me one time and ask "Is thi…
I've tried having them give me a checksum of the last four digits of my card number. They refused.
that’s the stupidest request to make of a customer service rep. good lord.
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#239There are multiple levels of protection one might want. I.e. when you are being selected for random questioning entering US as a non-US citizen, you'd benefit from steganography-like approach: you give a password, and relatively bland, non-personal stuff shows up, giving appearance of full access to a system. If you only care about your privacy, the next one is to have a destroy-everything script (and it's not that h…
I think all of that could be easily implemented by logging into different accounts by entering a different password/passcode.
So UserA:regularPassword would be one’s usual account, but UserA:obviousToGuess123 would actually log into UserB, and UserA:ohshithelp would log into UserC which has a startup script to secretly call police or whatever.
Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up with a rotary phone. From memory, 1 was the shortest to dial, 9 the longest.
I stand corrected then!
Pedantic tidbit of archaic lore: this was so because each digit was represented by the number of clicks that the rotating disc triggered on the line (with 10 clicks for 0).