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Comment by tdicola | Hacker News Reader

Automatic unlock of your computer when your phone is near seems like the kind of feature that sounds great on paper but is a nightmare in practice. What happens when someone picks up my phone and walks near my laptop, they suddenly have access to my entire machine?

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Once your nemesis has your phone and your laptop, the laptop screensaver password may not be chief among your worries!

I've been doing this for quite a while now with Knock [1].

It's pretty good, though I have to remember to take my phone with me when I leave my desk at work for an extended period of time.

It's nice to be able to walk up to my desk, tap my phone while it's in my pocket and see the computer unlock.

[1] http://www.knocktounlock.com

It's just a downside to the feature, I guess. Of course, I'd imagine you don't HAVE to enable this if you don't entirely trust it.

For me, having a lock screen at work/home is useless and just an annoyance. It's a pain always having to enable it when I leave work/home so this feature is perfect for me.

The time has come for phones to start recognizing the presence or non-presence of trusted individuals, granting various permissions.

I'd carry a tiny wearable for this.

Sounds like a great start for a dystopian sci-fi novel. Just imagine the effect it will have on our social habits when we start avoiding people that our Google Lens HUD marks as non-trusted. It doesn't even need to happen in a malicious way. All you need is the contrast between the people marked "green" and those you haven't added to your trust list.

The short movie "Sight" is a great demonstration of our potential near future of augemented reality technology and the effect it might have on our social lives: http://vimeo.com/46304267

Like a Motorola Skip, or any number of other NFC tags that will do this?

http://www.motorola.com/us/accessory-family-page-1/Motorola-...

To clarify, I meant this as a matter of ubiquity...

There are options for this functionality out there, of course, but they've not been adopted much by users.

I can see this working with 'trusted' areas.. of course it's a bad idea in a coffee shop or office with lots of people you don't trust.. but at home or your own office this can be really time saver.

I just don't see how, if it's a 'trusted area' you don't usually lock your screen (or maybe you do? I imagine most people don't though), which means if you're logging back in, it's because you've been away for a bit.

In which case, your machine may also be hibernating, which is slow to being with. So something like automatically unlocking while your phone is around isn't really all that useful.

Not to mention, how long does it take to type in a password?

It's not about time or anything so logical. It's about wowing tech-illiterate executives with flashy new toys.

You got me thinking... Combine this with something similar to Tasker, so it only works when you're in trusted areas (Office, Home - Not coffee shops, etc...)... This could also increase security if somebody was to somehow steal both your laptop and your phone...

On a tangent, I'm really excited about this and hope there's a Windows+Android version on the way (or clone)...

This will most definitely be something administrators have control over, as well as the individual user.

Someone's already made this six months ago on the iPhone: http://www.knocktounlock.com/

I've been using it for the past 6 months and it went from futuristic novelty to now daily use.

What happens when they steal both?

Hopefully nothing if you have a strong enough password. Chrome OS uses full disk encryption so there shouldn't be anything that an attacker with physical access could get to easily. If moving the phone near the computer suddenly unlocks it though you're screwed.

I thought that was the entire point, to unlock your chromebook automatically when you're close.

Uh...remote lock?

I suppose this feature will be more useful with an android wear device.

What happens is you learn to be more careful with your phone :)

Good thing I don't leave my phone and my laptop to charge in the same room…

presumably you have to unlock the phone first

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