Apple's stance on the Face ID's safety trick can be dangerous for a country like mine
Customer: “But Apple, what if a robber wants my iPhone X? Won’t they be able to simply point the camera towards my face to unlock it?”
Apple: “Oh, yeah, but in cases like this you just have to press the buttons in order to disable the Face ID. All sorted.”
I’ve been reading about this solution all over the Internet. Whenever someone points out to Apple that the Face ID alone doesn’t seem to protect the user in a theft situation, Apple’s strategy has been to reply that its technology is robber-proof provided that the user collaborates. If they are fast and chill enough to fool the bandit on the fly.
So here we can assume one of these two things: either nobody at Apple’s design team has ever been mugged so they genuinely don’t know what a robbery looks like apart from what they saw on movies and series, or Apple does know that trusting on Face ID as the primary safety feature for the one-thousand-dollars-iPhone probably makes X the easiest iPhone to access since the introduction of the Touch ID — and, knowing this, the company is just trying to diverge everybody’s attention.
See, if you’ve ever been robbed, you certainly remember that when these sort of things occur, we’re so stressed out that we can’t rationalise. What is worst: depending on the situation, you might as well get hurt if you, say, try to disable Face ID while the other person — you know, the one holding a gun or a knife — waits for you to deliver what they are politely asking for.
And that’s why it bothers me to see Apple advising its customers to take action. It might be a cultural thing, too, and maybe reacting is actually a good move in other countries. In Brazil, though, you don’t react. Never. You just handle everything and walk away without looking back. Otherwise, you might get hurt. A few days ago, a guy on a motorcycle stopped aside my aunt and put a gun on her belly while demanding her mobile; what if she owned an iPhone X and, having listened to what Apple has been saying, tried to disable the Face ID?
In June this year, a usually well-sourced Brazilian journalist reported that a thief refused to take the iPhone of one of his victims because he wouldn’t be able to unlock it. It wasn’t the kind of robbery you’re probably accustomed to hearing about, though. It happened on a bus; everybody inside was having their belongings taken. Ancelmo Góis from O Globo wrote that “the crook asked for the mobile phones, a woman gave her iPhone 6, and the thief: ‘This one is no good. I can’t unlock it.’”
Why am I bringing this story up? Because it’s almost a tale. It’s something so unlikely to happen that Góis added: “There are witnesses.” In a normal robbery (it’s scary that I actually know what a normal robbery is supposed to be like), the thief simply takes everything and toss later whatever they find useless.
So Apple, please, stop telling people what to do during a risky situation. You guys would be better off just saying that you can’t talk about customers’ safety because it’s not your job to ensure that people won’t be mugged. And it’s perfectly fine to say that because it’s true.
Face ID is an amazing piece of technology and I’m sure it’s incredibly safe, I'm not even saying that Apple shouldn't capitalise on that. But let’s face it: if someone is really keen on having access to an iPhone X, the easiest way is through the owner’s face, and if this person tries to put a barrier between the robber and the thing they want, this can mean trouble.
Leonardo Pereira is a Brazilian journalist located in Dublin. He is a senior writer and proofreader at Olhar Digital and can be found on the Internet as @leeopereira.
