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“ The odds of guessing a four-digit passcode are 1 in 10,000, and tools have been used to crack iPhone codes in the past. Apple says the chances of someone having a similar enough fingerprint to unlock a person’s phone is 1 in 50,000, and a similar enough random face tricking Face ID is 1 in 1,000,000 “
that’s a really funny way of framing it, to make it look like passcodes are weak. you know what’s twice as good as the odds given for fingerprints? a 5 digit passcode! what’s equal to the odds given for Face ID? a 6 digit passcode! every time you add a digit, you multply those odds by 10.
and that’s assuming simple numeric passcodes. the odds of guessing a 4 digit, case-sensitive, alphanumeric passcode would be a 1 in 14.7 million. 5 digits is over 1 in 916 million, 6 digit is 1 in 56.8 billion. if you throw in 32 common symbols, we get 1 in 78 million, 1 in 7.3 billion, and 1 in 689 billion. those numbers climb pretty quickly the more digits you add.
i know these aren’t the only issues with passcodes (like 24% of americans using a variation of just 8 common passcodes), but if you’re trying to push people to biometrics i guess you wouldn’t really care for that nuance anyway