Hacker News Reader

Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Or why you should know the side-button 5 click shortcut to lock the device’s biometrics.

The problem is that this is all about trade offs with no single optimal choice: for example, this only matters with cops who aren’t willing to threaten violence to get you to unlock your phone, and using a password incentivizes weak ones and gives someone else the opportunity to watch you enter it (say, at the police station when given a chance to call a lawyer).

What’s probably better in this case would Photos having a minimum deletion time like Dropbox, or simply streaming it because then you know it can’t be deleted and control precisely when that’s active because other people would really like to be able to delete their stuff when the secret police break down their doors.

View on HN

Long pressing power and any volume button is the actual combo, which is easy to activate even while its in your pocket.

And I agree, it is a tradeoff. It’s much better than half the people having the password 000000, which would be the alternative.

If you try it, you’ll find both work.

If you look at the settings, you’ll find that they are configurable.

The Emergency SOS setting controls whether actual calls are made. If you try it, it requires you to enter your password in either case but you can choose whether to enable the feature where it calls the local emergency number automatically.

I really miss the power/lock button being on the top. Having to combine is just stupid. Normal devices have a single power button and getting to it should be not confusing based on orientation.

This. For audio/photo/video delete removes it from view but does not delete until a configurable period of time has elapsed--and changing that configuration does not alter the timer on existing stuff. Also, no deletion can actually happen without contacting the associated account which can be set to deny the delete and can be set to upload anything queued for deletion. While this will not stop them from simply smashing the phone that's likely to carry far more consequences.

You can also ask Siri what your name is or whose iPhone this is while NOT looking at the screen, it will disable Face ID given that the phone is locked

Better solution: have syncthing rapidly upload new videos when they're taken to a host on the internet. Give someone else access to these files.

"Well duh just use this button combo nobody knows"

"Well duh just use a strong password instead of abc123"

Yes, that’s the point: real world security often has trade offs where there isn’t a simple option which is universally better. Biometrics are a huge win for most people’s realistic threat models because we have decades showing that when left to our own devices most of us pick easily-entered short passwords because it’s tedious entering longer ones many times a day, especially on a touchscreen, or, worse, people turn off auto-lock or set it for a longer period of time.

The source event here is not something most people have to worry about and the suggested advice only applies to a small fraction of people who do have that risk so I think it’s better to educate people about the trade offs to both options as well as other things to consider like the one I mentioned.

The very first suggestion on mastodon was that and it’s wrong — supposedly that combination is for emergency calling

Just tried it, it locks my phone as expected. Maybe I haven’t configured an emergency’s number to call ?

Hmnnnn

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/contact-emergency-ser...

Yeah maybe this is why the other person thought so as well, so I guess it’s both true and false

It doesn’t become false because you tried to be pedantic without first confirming that you were correct. Just check first next time.

…and it also disables FaceID. Source: just tried it.

Holding the power and volume up buttons also works and is arguably easier.

it does trigger a suggestion for calling an emergency number, however when you cancel that suggestion, it locks the phone back in a way that requires the pin to unlock.

Yeah it looks like the more efficient way is to hold power and volume up

Did you try that before saying we were wrong? I verified that both worked before I commented.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com