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Comment by leokennis | Hacker News Reader

My advice if you’re not on the level where three letter agencies are actively interested in your comings and goings:

- Use a strong pass phrase

- Enable biometrics so you don’t need to type that pass phrase 100 times per day

- Learn the shortcut to have your phone disable biometrics and require the pass phrase so you can use it when police is coming for you, you’re entering the immigration line in the airport etc. - on iPhone this is mashing the side button 5 times

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> Learn the shortcut to have your phone disable biometrics and require the pass phrase

On my Pixel (Android), it's hold the power button for ~2 seconds then select Lockdown.

In case anyone with an Android is confused because they don't see the option: I believe that you have to explicitly enable the Lockdown option in Android's system settings before it shows up.

There are a couple of apps that will also lock down with a tap instantly. I'm sorry I forget the names though, but handy if you have it in hand and "open". I have been using iphone too long now to remember the names of the apps though. you can put a shortcut on every "page" of your android and tap it, it enforces locking the phone by passcode. so on most phones it would be a swipe and a tap, probably less than a 200 milliseconds if you practiced it.

On recent iPhones, the way to disable biometrics is to hold the side button and either volume button until a prompt appears, then tap cancel. Mashing the side button 5 times does not work.

Not sure how recent you're talking but I have an iPhone 11 Pro and I just tested pressing the side button 5 times and it takes me to the power off screen and prompts me for my password the same way that side button + volume does.

Apple's docs also say that pressing the side button 5 times still works.

> If you use the Emergency SOS shortcut, you need to enter your passcode to re-enable Touch ID, even if you don't complete a call to emergency services.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208076

Pressing it five times starts the emergency SOS countdown (and requires the passcode next time) on my iPhone XS. Maybe you have the auto-calling disabled?

It doesn't on my 2nd Gen iPhone SE (2020). That said, anything that causes the "swipe to power off" screen to appear has the same affect, so essentially holding down the button for 5 seconds does the trick.

Works fine on my 11, my wifes 12, her backup SE gen 2 and my backup SE gen1.

Just tested all of them

The side button 5 times thing is disabled by default, but can be enabled from Settings > Emergency SOS.

I just verified this on iOS 15.1 on an iPhone 12.

I’m on an iPhone 13 and the latest iOS and it does work here. But so does your method…

But I guess yours is the “official” way to do it indeed:

https://www.imore.com/how-quickly-disable-face-id

If you _are_ at the level where TLAs are interested in you they will not give you a chance to mash that button. You will have a loaded gun pointed at your head out of nowhere and you will freeze. From experience.

Is that a story you mind sharing?

He got popped for pedophilia if I remember correctly.

Not sure why this is downvoted; you are right.

I use this app on my phone

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.wesaphzt.privatelock/

It locks the phone when a movement threshold is broken, and then requires the password instead of biometrics to unlock the phone.

So the snatch the phone when it is unlocked vector gets harder.

In most cases you are going to want to separately passphrase your messaging stuff so it is locked up when you are not using it. That makes every thing else a lot easier. For example, there is a Signal fork that supports such operation:

* https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android

So you're saying I should have to type a secure passcode every single time I want to read or send a message on my phone?

No thanks.

I think that it would stay unlocked for a time, possibly till you locked it. Possibly such an arraignment would be more practical for something offline like encrypted email.

A compromise would be to just save the messages to a passphrase. You could use a public key so that you would only need the passphrase to read the old messages. I haven't heard about anything that actually does this.

I just tried this an it does not work for iPhone is it only on a certain iOS? I am a bit behind on updates. Thanks

That's actually the old method for iPhone 7 and before. Now, you can activate emergency SOS by holding the power button and one of the volume buttons. Assuming you don't need to contact any emergency contacts or services, just cancel out of that and your passcode will be required to unlock.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208076

Try: Hold "volume up" and "power" for 2 seconds

You'll feel a vibration, and biometric login will be disabled until you enter your passcode.

That did the trick thanks. But ultimately I’m behind on updates so my phone could probably be broken into trivial with the forensic tools available to most law enforcement. I’m going to update soon.

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