Locking your smartphone screen with a pattern is not the best way to protect your smartphone. Reason? It turns out that such a pattern is easy to reproduce. All you have to do is look at the stranger's shoulder carefully, and the seemingly effective lock will prove very easy to break.
Research conducted by researchers from the Naval Academy and the University of Maryland has tested what can best protect smartphones against the so-called. attacks from behind the shoulder. The tests verified whether the participants were able to determine screen lock patterns by looking at the smartphone at different angles, at a distance of about 1.8 meters. The results of the research proved to be surprising. It turned out that it is a popular screen lock with the pattern is the most risky option. Sixty percent of smartphone users were able to reproduce the lock pattern. A slight change in the way the lock pattern was used, by pointing only the pattern points, reduced the efficiency of the searchers to 35.3 percent. The most effective way to protect your phone, according to scientists, has been a six-digit PIN.
ESET experts recall that even a six-digit PIN code or complicated pattern does not give you 100% confidence in breaking security - you know there are cases of guessing the lock based on streaks left on the screen of the smartphone. However, the effectiveness of protection can increase the retention of discretion when unlocking the device, periodically changing the PIN or lock pattern, and ... taking care of the screen cleanness of the smartphone. In the opinion of specialists, it is also worth protecting the phone with an application which, if stolen or lost, will activate additional access to the phone and data stored on it, and will allow to remotely erase all data stored in the device memory and on the card installed in it.
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