IPhone TouchID protection
Is TouchID protection useful or useless? It all depends really. It depends on who you want to protect your iPhone from. If your threat model is theft, your fingerprint is brilliant. If your threat model is coercion by a government authority, it is worse than useless.
If being arrested you can invoke the fifth amendment and deny telling your password. What you can not do is deny the government authority press your finger on your iPhone fingerprint reader. As they are entitled to register your fingerprint anyway. And instead of using an ink pad, they just will use your iPhone. Your fingerprint is not protected in the fifth amendment, but your password is.
Ok, TouchID might not always be brilliant, so what do I do? What you can do is disable it. If your iPhone get stolen the thieves can not try an unlimited number of password. After 3 attempts it gets locked.
I still want TouchID enabled, but what if government authority wants access and I dont want to give them access? If you get the chance you should reboot your iPhone. Hold in home button and the power button for 10 seconds and your phone is restarted. TouchID doesn’t work on first login after reboot. You will need to use the password then. And after 48 hours your TouchID gets disabled.
Thats it really.
Happy security!
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