+ As fdik said above, you can't change your fingerprint or face easily, and it's always public
+ Face recognition and fingerprint scanning are not robust against spoofing — there are known ways to circumvent both
+ You can be compelled to authenticate a biometric without a warrant
Don't use biometrics as a password; use them as a username.
Even then people's faces change and through accidents fingerprints can also be changed / removed and then you're shit out of luck. I'm terrified I would store my important shit in something like that then get into a car accident or something and be no longer able to open it.
What if you get into a car accident and no longer remember the master password to your hardware password safe?
What if you remember it but lost your arms and are no longer able to type?
The car accident scenario is not very useful.
For the average person who's more concerned about opportunistic theft of a device than a targeted attack I'd argue that biometrics are more secure because you can't have the equivalent of a shitty password. There is no fingerprint equivalent of "1111" as your device PIN. A random pickpocket in the subway doesn't know who you are and thus can't implement any spoofs.
For anyone trying to defend against an attacker specifically targeting them, you're completely right.
It's like if you wrapped your laptop in a decorative cover of your password written everywhere.
Similarly, if facial recognition becomes the standard, thieves will just take a snap when they rob you.
Including very likely the fingerprint scanner itself.
If I'm a victim of a targetted attack, better not to have a phone at all.
- Stealing fingerprint requires access to your fingerprint in the first place. That narrows down the attack surface A LOT. - Coercing someone to authenticate is possible for password too. Unlike fingerprints passwords can be stolen remotely. - People tend to use same PIN everywhere. Therefore "can't change your biometric info" isn't that big of a problem. Fingerprints aren't prone to dictionary attack either because there are no "common fingerprints".
Face recognition can be bypassed more easily thanks to a huge database of faces called facebook.
But we shouldn't reject a security solution outright before properly analyzing the threat model. They all can have their legitimate use cases for certain scenarios.
This is not as difficult as some might think. We leave them all over our devices for example, but physical access is not even necessary. Jan Krissler managed to get the fingerprint of the German defense minister 2 years ago using only photos of her.