This all seems like excellent good sense, and a point well made - except for the attack on biometrics as identification, for example on a passport. Yes, you can fool a biometric sensor with a printed-out latex finger surface. But, at a tight passport control, or if FSM forbid you should be hauled in by the cops or the coroner, it is at least plausibly possible to determine the pattern of whorls on your actual finger, in a test that can be performed and supervised so as to make the use of a fake fingerprint at least difficult, and possibly next to impossible.
No-one objects that your drivers license gives your height, gender, weight, hair color, and (sometimes, I think) eye color, all of which can be spoofed or altered to a greater or lesser degree. A fingerprint lock on your phone is a bad idea, but not all fingerprint biometrics are bad ideas.
If itās like most smartphones, they have total access to your email, which likely gives them total access to your bank account. Your bank will quite happily send a new password for your online banking to your email.
I agree most smartphones probably have that, but mine does not.
And if it did, they need to answer security questions to get to change my bank password. They do not just email one out if you ask though many websites do. (The security questions are actually pretty terrible, so my answers donāt actually answer the questions, but they still let me in.)
Iām talking about a password to log onto the banking site, not a PIN for ATMs or anything.
And they donāt send a new password, they send a link where I need to answer the security questions, at which point they will allow me to change my password.
It would be terrible if I knew my password might be compromised and not be able to hopefully change it before anyone could log in as me.
Which would be pretty long. AND if you are traveling, youāll need to get access to a computer from which you can wipe the other device.
But yes, as of know, I still do not see a really big danger to most users and people with more sensitive data to protect shouldnāt have used the feature even before the hack.
With whom do you bank? I just checked with mine and they require Fax or Snail mail and the will send out a new Online-PIN with Snail Mail. I think I once used their phone service (with another password) to request a new online PIN, but I got that one as snail mail again.
Iām pretty sure that this this is the MO of all banks I used and use.
While Iāll decline to say who I bank with, doesnāt it seem dangerous to you that if someone gets your Online-PIN, you canāt change it right away?
Or will the bank cancel the old one right away so it canāt be used, but youāll still have to wait for snail mail in order to log in again?
I much prefer deciding on my own password online than having one assigned to me by the bank.
Edit: Oh, I see thatās answered in your post. You can fax them to let them know you need it changed.
Really ? Your bank account is only protected by ONE password ? Personally my bank account always use two token identification. And the second token is given by a completely separate deviceā¦
Iām sorry you had a poor quality dumb phone. My old Sanyo 7050 was awesome, extremely clear call quality, super loud speaker and ringer, not to mention you could actually feel it vibrate. And on the plus side I only had to charge it once a week and it was ruggedized so dropping it wasnāt an issue.
So I guess itās not a net bad thing that a smart phone does the one thing a phone is suppose to do worse than what came before it.
(But honestly at this point most people are texting more than talking, which unless you had a Palm or some ancient slider sucked hard when doing on a keypad.)
The new features will reduce grab and go theft of iPhones, but Iām afraid there will be an increase in grab and āUNLOCK YOUR FUCKING PHONE MOTHERFUCKER! NOW GIVE ME YOUR PASSCODE BEFORE I KNIFE YOU, JACKASS!ā
These were decisions made by the cell phone carriers and the phone companies. When I worked at BellSouth Cellularās R&D Lab, they were trying very hard to keep the analog system while all the other companies were touting that they were digital. The implication, as CDs were then the preferred music technology, was that the sound was better on a digital network. But, actually, the spectrum for analog was actually better at carrying voice. (Itās a different band; the old analog band was a long wavelength, so had more coverage).
Companies went to digital because a) the features they could deliver (smartphones) and b) they could carry more traffic on the towers.
The lack of battery life is a tradeoff that the phone manufacturerās make. I work with mobile technology today that is used in industrial situations and those devices are made to charge quickly and with long battery life; itās possible but it costs more.
Because of the iPhoneās dominance, there are not that many slider phones available anymore - theyāve all gone to touch screens. I actually really liked the slider format with the physical keyboard available if needed, touch screen also on the phone.
I really LOVE Appleās commitment to industrial design and I wish other companies would become as dedicated to design as Apple; unfortunately most engineering companies are headed up by engineers and they just donāt understand design that well. The last company I worked with made monitors and at one point the head of the company was talking about having a stand like the Mac. I cannot EVEN describe how ugly that stand was - a very crude copy of Macās.
I also LOVE the iPhone camera, which is the main reason I carry one. I found I was using my phone camera a lot (I was that person who could never be bothered to carry a camera) and I really think the camera is amazing.
Iām actually curious to see where SIRI goes; I worked on voice technology a long time ago. The first release of Siri was in beta, which was super sneaky of them. The only way to make that technology work is to gather about a jillion samples of voices. Which is exactly what they did. So, I do admire what they did and think the tech will move forward, but I think what they released was the magical thing they made it out to be. Maybe they had to pretend it was so great in order to make it good for the next round. Weāll see. I found the version on my phone really not worth the effort.
What gets me frustrated with Apple is that they do what a lot of tech companies do which is promote new features while sacrificing a lot of the basic features. To me, it sucks that most every phone call I make ends with āhello, hello, can you hear me?ā The battery on the phone, the antenna, all of these affect the quality of voice transmission. The tradeoff you have to make to carry an iPhone is to assume that the actual phone part is pretty much a sometimes available feature while you get a little computer you can carry around with you.
I am really interested in communications technology. What Iāve noticed as a trend is that the most stripped down websites, the simplest forms of communication like texting and twittering tend to be popular because they run fast and reliably. I think that it is possible for us to have reliable voice communication as well - itās something we all used to have with landline - and I wish that the phone manufacturers and carriers would fixate on that more than on fingerprinting tech, which is fun but not really all that useful or secure. I work with engineers, software people - they love to work on new stuff and really donāt enjoy fixing old stuff that is broken and that whatās I see happening here.
Iām sorry Iām a bit out of sorts today; Iām not feeling well. I think Apple has done some amazing things. I love their industrial design and I think they are one of the few tech companies that really thinks about how people will use their devices. I just would like to see companies focus on getting some basic things dead right than offering up glittery baubles instead. All tech companies do this, not just Apple, and I wish consumers would push back a little on Apple instead of just buying into their hype machine, because if people insisted that their phones work as, well, phones, then we could have both this amazing computer we carry around with us AND a functional phone.
