Is Face ID more secure than a finger print?

[jsimenhoff]

How can your face possibly be more secure than a finger print? A fingerprint is supposed to be the most uniquely identifying feature of your body. Couldn't anyone put on a mask that looks like you and fool the new iPhone X?

 

[jpishgar]

Good point - facial biometrics are easier to fool than fingerprints, and moreso than iris scans.
During the show where the new feature was announced, it didn't seem to work very well, either. One wonders if most people are just going to stick with swiping a numbered code to unlock.

 

[ThatVietGuy]

Well, every fanboy is going to believe Apple that it's fool-proof and it's only inaccurate 1 in a million like Apple claims.

It even failed during the demo.

This is just typical Apple marketing and everyone will fall for it.

 

[derekullo]

A fingerprint is harder to fool due to most being captured at a higher dpi / resolution than a standard camera allowing for a more accurate capture to compare real fingerprints against.

A facial recognition algorithm has to leave a little wiggle room due to how your face naturally changes; dry hot weather causing dry skin, cutting yourself shaving, getting a black eye from falling off the bed ...

Your fingerprint on the other hand is much more resilient.

At work they made us scan 2 fingers just in case "something happened" to the other finger.

There is no second face you can scan lol.

Notice earlier I said harder to fool not secure.

Both can be easily fooled

Mythbusters did an episode solely on getting past a fingerprint biometrics.
https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hji3kp_i9k

As for the facial biometrics you may not beat it with a mask but with a specially made image on a computer screen with the iphone being forced to believe it was a real person.

A 4k picture of some one from lets say instagram is enough to start the building of an image to fool a facial scanner.

It is a lot harder to get a high resolution of a finger from social media, unless some one frequently posts high resolution pictures of their finger lol.

 

[derekullo]

The one thing facial biometrics is better at than fingerprint biometrics is convenience.

Most consumers will unfortunately prefer convenience over safety.

Apple knows this ... hence Face ID

 

[jsimenhoff]

My theory is that it's not really that secure at all, but merely another way to sell the $1,000 selfie phone.