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Apple’s HomeView Tries Face Authentication Without FaceID

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Apple’s HomeView Tries Face Authentication Without FaceID

Apple's HomeView, which debuts on Friday, is a smart home device—think of it as a an iPhone-Apple Watch hybrid sitting on your counter—that can be personalized for up to six people and connected to each of their iCloud accounts. Using ambient face and voice data, it is designed to seamlessly switch between users while maintaining each of their privacy. You can ask HomeView about your schedule for the day and what movie your friend recommended in a text, but you'll be stopped from asking about your roommate's travel plans or her texts from last night. The feature doesn't rely on one of Apple's battle-tested biometric locks, like FaceID or TouchID, though. Instead, it uses new “person recognition” technology built off of an Apple architecture for securing sensor data.

This is a key departure for Apple. On the one hand, the company has still been very careful to think about security and privacy comprehensively. Not only does HomeView check for your face and voice before accessing your data from iCloud, it is also designed like an Apple Watch to check that your iPhone or iPad is on the same Wi-Fi network as the HomeView and has been recently unlocked (with FaceID or a PIN). On the other hand, expanding the architecture used to process biometric data and authenticate users creates more opportunities for mistakes and potential vulnerabilities. And when it comes to attempting to access users' Apple data, both law enforcement and exploit brokers consistently go to great lengths to attempt to break the company's on-device defenses.


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