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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying or maybe you didn't understand me. I am saying the it doesn't use the built-in locking mechanism but instead it's own "screen lock" that looks similar.

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Out of curiosity, how can you tell it's not the built-in locking mechanism? The lock screen looks the same, except for the glow around the avatar to me. It even shows the alerts in the top right corner. The screen locks in the same fashion as normal (using the hotkeys, waiting for it to time out, etc), too.

What am I missing that makes you think it's not the built-in locking mechanism?

I'm not 100% sure but all signs point to this being the case. I have used multiple Bluetooth unlock proximity apps in the past and they all do the same thing. They throw up their own lockscreens in place of the real one. I am fairly certain that, as mentioned in this same comment "family", that this lockscreen is less secure than the system lockscreen. There was speculation that this might not engage all the security mechanisms like disk encryption. If I were one of the developers of this app I would be first in line to tell my visitors/customers that my product didn't compromise at all on security. Unfortunately, I don't recall any such claim on their site (if I'm wrong please let me know, I'm on my phone).

Their FAQ has been updated. They do not use a proprietary lockscreen.

  Does Knock use its own proprietary lock screen?
  No. Knock uses Apple's built-in OS X lock screen with our UI on top.

http://www.knocktounlock.com/faq/

Hmm, that is interesting. I still would like an addressing some of the other very valid concerns here that certain safeguards might not be engaged but if this is true then this is really cool. From elsewhere in this thread there are people saying it doesn't work with certain full-disk encryption setups but that's to be expected I guess. I have it installed, if not always running, and it is a cool app and from what they have said they have planned I will be following it. Thanks for the update!

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