How to Keep Someone From Unlocking Your Pixel 4 While You Sleep
The Pixel 4 and 4 XL have barely gotten into the hands of reviewers, and a major security flaw has already been discovered: the phone’s new facial recognition will let you face unlock your phone whether you’re sleeping or not.
Using Face ID or your thumbprint to unlock your smartphone might feel like you’re in a sci-fi movie, but there’s an understandable amount of skepticism about biometrics precisely because of security concerns like this ( and others ). To prevent exploitation, many manufacturers include measures that check vigilance when using facial recognition to unlock a device, such as scanning for open eyes or requiring the user to blink first. Such measures exist on Apple products as well as previous versions of Android, but the Pixel 4 does not have such checks. The phone will let anyone through if they point the phone at its owners, even if they are asleep, drunk or dead.
If you’re wondering how such a bug could have passed beta testing, the truth is, it’s not a bug, and it wasn’t always that way. Ars Technica notes that earlier Pixel 4 models included a “require eyes open” option to unlock the phone with their face, but that setting was dropped from the final version. Google says that the fix is already ready , but it will be ready in a few months.
However, all is not lost; Pixel 4 users have several ways to prevent an unconscious face from unintentionally unlocking.
The first option is to temporarily disable biometric unlocks using the Lock feature. In lock mode, face and fingerprint recognition is disabled and your device will need a pin, pattern, or password the next time you try to unlock your phone, although you must enable this feature in your Pixel 4’s system settings in order to use this.
- Open the Settings app.
- Use the search bar to find “Lockdown”.
- Tap the Lock switch to enable this feature.
- You can then turn on the lock by holding the power button to open the power menu and then pressing “Lock”.
The only downside to the lock feature is that it only applies to the next unlock and must be reapplied every time you want to disable biometric unlock.
If that sounds overwhelming, another option is to simply not use the face unlock feature, but instead use a pin, pattern, password, or fingerprint to unlock the phone. You can set your preferred unlocking method by going to the Settings app and searching for “screen lock” in the search bar.