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I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that someone can be compelled to give up their biometric login, when a password is off limits. It feels like this goes against the spirit of the 5th amendment.

This is especially true as the industry pushes more and more toward Passkeys and other passwordless means of login, which rely more and more on biometrics.

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Definitely not a coincidence.

Oh we do end-to-end encrypt everything for your safety, see our article on the unbreakable protocol... but you can unlock everything with this 4 digit windows hello pin, unlimited retries, you are mandatory to define the pin, if you want to use high security features... Totally not a backdoor.

Apple is more principled on this front definitely.

Isn’t a pin considered a password and not required to be given up, unlike a fingerprint or Face ID?

But a 4 digit PIN with unlimited retries can be brute forced.

Replacing a password with a 4 digit PIN is less secure. If a user wanted a 4 character password, they’d make a 4 character password. Forcing the creation doesn’t make much sense on a desktop.

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