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Comment by jeron | Hacker News Reader

Samsung features have always overpromised, undelivered. Remember the facial unlock that would allow a photo of someone to unlock the phone?

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That was a thing with one of the later Google Nexus phones, too.

Android added face unlock way back around 2012 for the Nexus 7 which was incredibly insecure. I think they eventually removed it.

Didn’t Windows have the same issue too?

The mobile OS? Did that even have face unlock? I don't recall that being a thing.

You mean the iris unlock? Turned out all those videos were fake. By eiter pressing the fingerprint sensor on the back. Or using a store demo unit.

Pixels are pixels. How is a camera supposed to know if a face is real or a color print?

Facial recognition is a bunch of snake oil

Apple uses a laser infrared dot projector.

Other manufacturers cheap out on that part, or prioritize design (no notch/camera hole) over security.

"Cheaping out" is not the best description. Apple has riddled the space with a ton of patents. https://insights.greyb.com/apple-facial-recognition-patents/

Microsoft is using IR to do Windows Hello so there must be some workaround to the patents.

How do your eyes do it? (You can do it securely without a lidar by thinking about this.)

How does Apple do it?

"The technology that enables Face ID is some of the most advanced hardware and software that we’ve ever created. The TrueDepth camera captures accurate face data by projecting and analyzing thousands of invisible dots to create a depth map of your face and also captures an infrared image of your face. "

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208108

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