Several weeks ago, before the iPhone X premiered, banking experts were skeptical about replacing TouchID technology with FaceID, which uses biometric face recognition. They were saying that before banks accept this new login method, they will have to make sure the technology is safe and make appropriate changes to their apps. Apple fans claimed that banks will not have a say in the matter of allowing the new login method because FaceID would somewhat automatically replace the fingerprint.
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iPhone X is now available on the Polish market, which means it's time to clear out the issue. The information I managed to gather suggests that some iPhone X users in Poland cannot log in to their banking apps using FaceID - at least for the time being. This is the case for PKO customers, among others. In order to use the bank's app on their new smartphone, they need to use a PIN code. BZ WBK has the same situation. - We haven’t made the option of logging in using FaceID available to our customers yet, we are currently testing it. We will introduce this functionality if we are absolutely sure that it is safe - Ewa Krawczyk from the BZ WBK press office wrote in an e-mail.
mBank, on the other hand, did not block the biometric login option for iPhone X users. - As a rule, mBank's iOs application uses Apple's native functionalities, which also includes FaceID - says Kinga Wojciechowska from the company’s press office. This is significant because mBank offers so called mobile authorization, which means that after the user logs in to the app, they can approve transactions in the online transaction system just by pressing "OK". We could very theoretically assume that if a customer saves their login information in their smartphone’s browser, which some people do, and their phone is acquired by a person who manages to trick FaceID, they can lose all the money from their account.
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Meanwhile online we can see more and more proof that FaceID is not as safe as Apple claimed it to be. A Vietnamese company used a mask to successfully unlock an iPhone X, while the tech news website The Verge published a video that shows a ten-year-old boy unlocking an iPhone X with his face, even though the phone is configured only to recognize his mother's face.
