Touch ID was very secure; Face ID is not. How do I make Face ID more secure?

dannysnyder wrote:

I’m hearing conflicting info. I’m being told that if require attention is on then looking away before swiping up will re-lock the phone. But I’m also hearing that once you’ve looked at it it’s unlocked. Which way is it?

As was linked earlier, that depends greatly on whether attention-awareness is enabled.

Change Face ID and attention settings on iPhone - Apple Support

Touch ID has no analog to attention awareness.

Your friends are being less than helpful here.

The Tap to Wake and Raise to Wake settings control when the Face ID TrueDepth camera goes active.

If Tap to Wake is enabled and Raise to Wake is disabled for instance, Face ID activates after a screen tap.

Wake, unlock, and lock iPhone - Apple Support

Depending on the device, I usually use (just) the side button to activate the Face ID unlock. Less commonly do I have the tap-to-wake or raise-to-wake settings enabled. Tap-to-wake works reasonably on an iPad with a cover, but an iPhone can falsely trigger in a shirt pocket.

As has arisen in some similar “my friends told me” contexts including in some viral videos, there have been some (farcical) claims about ways to bypassing Face ID too, though those claims can be disproven by temporarily blocking the Face ID scanner. Which will prevent the claimed Face ID “bypass” from working. There was a (false) calculator divide-by-zero ban claim a while back, and more recently the “moo” shortcut foolishness.

As for Touch ID, it is not necessary to keep your finger on the home button continuously, or to even use a registered finger with the home button. This differs somewhat from Face ID with attention awareness enabled.

As for your friends, I’d be inclined to restrict Face ID unlock to the side button, would use a robust password of twelve or fifteen characters or more, would take some care to avoid offering opportunities for shoulder surfing passwords, and would preferably not let my phone out of my control.

As for being helpful, your friends could explain their claims, and you could then check the documentation or run some experiments to verify those claims. I’m citing Apple documentation in my replies here, as an example.

About Face ID advanced technology - Apple Support

Change Face ID and attention settings on iPhone - Apple Support

I would suggest checking that

• Settings > Accessibility > Face ID & Attention > Require Attention for Face ID is turned ON.
• The option to allow using Face ID when you are wearing a mask is turned OFF.

dannysnyder wrote:

As I stated earlier, Require Attention is ON, Attention Aware Features is ON, and Face ID with a Mask is OFF.

I would argue that the very nature of Touch ID is that it's attention aware. It's pretty easy to tell through tactile sensation where the Home Button/Touch ID sensor is and if your finger is in the correct position. Face ID seems to be excessively generous about what constitutes "attention", including some pretty extreme angles, eyes mostly closed, etc. Moreover, why is the device left immediately unlocked just by looking at it without swiping up? Why not (at least optionally) require the swipe up before it tries to Face ID? Additionally, I have friends who claim that they can look at their lock screen and it won't trigger the Face ID check until they swipe up or tap a notification.

Your friends claims are incorrect. The fact they can swipe or tap a notification proves Face ID, which does its job without announcing anything is working on their phone. If someone else were to take their phones, they would not be able to swipe up to open anything on the phone.

All said though, I'm not sure what you're hoping to accomplish here? You do understand this is a user to user only forum, not Apple Support? Apple neither participates here, nor reads posts for user feedback. I think Face ID is terrific and it does exactly what its supposed to do, without having to touch my iPhone. But if you're not happy with it, explaining to only other users why you think it's less secure is a waste of time. Provide feedback to Apple here --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I would NOT want an iPhone with Touch ID, of that I'm completely sure.

dannysnyder wrote:

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Tap/Raise to wake were on but turning them off just means I have to press a button to activate the screen- I just played with that since you mentioned it. That helps a little but what I'm still seeing is that once the screen is on, Face ID does its thing. So in my real world example from Monday, I was checking the time on my phone, it unlocked because my face was in view (with Require Attention and Attention Awareness turned on) with the screen on, my sister grabbed my phone and then started helping herself to looking at what was on it. Yes, there are obviously all sorts of other respect issues there but that's way outside the scope of this community. With all of my previous iPhones, just looking at the time/lock screen on my phone would not have left my phone in a state that my sister (or anyone else) could have grabbed it and started perusing it.

No difference from just entering a passcode, possibly also having that passcode shoulder surfed, and then having your phone immediately yanked from your grasp. Or the Touch ID unlock. Which is one of the patterns of theft in recent years, too.

You’re left to depend on Stolen Device Protection too, probably best set to everywhere.

This is effectively also practice for proper iPhone use in hostile crowds.

Whether you choose detente, or leverage, or lodging criminal charges, is up to you.

I have a 16 Pro iPhone and I couldn’t agree more about Face ID.

Again, telling us what you want is pointless. Use the link I provided and tell Apple.