Face unlock can easily be defeated with a photo on many popular phones, study finds

Face unlocking is nice, convenient and nearly ubiquitous these days, but is it safe?

According to a study conducted by the Dutch Consumers Association (via The Register), on (too) many phones it can easily be defeated with a printed photo of the owner. 

The study tested 110 smartphones and was able to unlock 42 of them (though some of them were mere variants of the same models, i.e. Samsung Galaxy A8 with 32GB and 64GB of RAM) with a high-resolution photo of the owner. An additional 6 models (again, some are variants) also failed the test, but they did offer a stricter security setting for face recognition.  Read more...