Apple released more details about the iPhone X's[1] Face ID feature when it published a new privacy site[2] Wednesday, addressing some of the concerns that people have had since the face-scanning feature was announced.
When Apple[3] unveiled the feature, which can unlock phones and be used for payments, it spurred not only a thousand alarming think pieces, but also a letter from Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asking how the company will protect the data. There have also been worries about how much to trust Face ID[4]. The company's first public demo of Face ID didn't go that smoothly, after all - at one point, the demonstrator had to skip the face scan and enter his password instead.
The most telling answers on Face ID come from a white paper[5] the company's posted on its security.
The information collected by Face ID won't leave your device, the company reiterates on the site[6]. Apple also lays out exactly what it's storing: infrared images of your face captured when you first start Face ID, the mathematical representations of your face it calculates during that enrolment and whatever other images the phone deems necessary to account for changes to your face (a beard growing over time, for example). Images are also cropped close to your face to avoid grabbing any background information.
There are also several instances when Face ID won't work. These include when:...
- The device has just been turned on or restarted.
- The device hasn't been unlocked for more than 48 hours.
- The passcode hasn't been used to unlock the device in the past 156 hours (6.5