Touch ID

An Additional Way to Unlock With Touch ID

What is Touch IDYou are probably already familiar with this: Touch ID is the fingerprint recognition technology by Apple, used to open your devices, authenticate apps and even buy things. In 2013, when the iPhone 5s first introduced Touch ID, it was taken as a revolution in how we interact with our phones by killing off old passcode-based security and bake biometrics instead.

The way it works is that Touch ID is the biometric fingerprint sensor built into the Home / Power button on your iPhone, reading and verifying your unique fingerprint pattern to make sure who you are after a set time. Then, Face ID unlocks the phone or authorizes payments in literally 1 second.

Touch ID is neat because it’s the perfect blend of swift, convenient security — 2.5-factors-authentication if you want to get technical. Local: Instead of sending fingerprint data to an Apple server somewhere in the cloud, it gets stored locally in a chip called the Secure Enclave. That way, even if someone does hack into your device, their device won’t contain any fingerprint data to copy.

As Face ID will now adorn the front of many iPhones, it’s important to remember that there are some notable exceptions. I found it on the iPhone SE, and also some iPads and MacBooks). In fact, many find it very “idiot-proof” since it works even with sunnies and masks.

In other words: The age of the tactile is alive and well – Touch ID does it right.