Parents with technologically savvy kids might wants to sleep with gloves on, if this tale is any warning.
Six-year-old Ashlynd Howell saw her opening and took it when her mother was sleeping heavily. She used her mom’s fingerprint to unlock her iPhone, and then went on a shopping spree for Pokémon toys — $250 worth of toys, to be exact.
According to the Wall Street Journal, here’s how it went down:
After Ashlynd’s parents received 13 order confirmations for Pokémon items, they initially thought they’d been hacked, then they figured Ashlynd had bought them unintentionally. “No, Mommy, I was shopping,” Ms. Howell said her daughter told her. “But don’t worry—everything that I ordered is coming straight to the house.” Ms. Howell added: ”She is really proud of herself.”
The Howells could return only four of the items. So Ms. Howell came up with a solution and told Ashlynd, “Well, Santa found out and that is what Santa is going to bring you for Christmas.”
Ashlynd isn’t the first kid to successfully crack the iPhone’s Touch ID security flaw: A seven-year-old boy used his sleeping dad’s fingerprints to open his phone and play games. His dad is a computer security and cryptology at Johns Hopkins, so if he’s hackable by a first grader, there’s really no hope for the rest of us.
Even if you’re not in the presence of bored children, your friends might be equally as mischievous, as TechCrunch points out: Passing out at a party or next to a suspicious lover could land you in hot water, if you’re a heavy sleeper with the Touch ID passcode enables. Once they’re in, they can take it a step further and reset your fingerprint passcode, locking you out of your own phone when you wake up.
Guard your fingers, people. It’s a whole new fingerprint-stealing world out there.
[h/t SFGate]
