Samsung's Galaxy S8 facial recognition feature can be fooled with a photo

March 31, 2017

Samsung's Galaxy S8 facial recognition feature can be fooled with a photo

samsung galaxy s8 plus face detection

Samsung's newest security feature can easily be fooled.

The Samsung Galaxy S8, which launches April 28, has a new facial recognition feature that lets you unlock the phone just by looking into the front-facing camera. In a brief demo given to Business Insider last week, it was actually faster than using a fingerprint.

But it's not a secure way to lock your phone, as the folks at iDeviceHelp discovered this week.

In a demo, which we first saw on The Verge, iDeviceHelp was able to fool the facial recognition feature with a photo. It took a little longer than normal for the S8 to register the photo, but it worked.

Samsung did say the facial recognition feature isn't as secure as a fingerprint or the new iris scanner, but the fact that it's still an option to lock your phone when it can easily be tricked is a bad move. Plus, there's better technology already available that lets you unlock a device with your face, like Windows Hello, which uses special sensors to analyze the contours of your face. It's so accurate that it can even tell identical twins apart.

Our advice: If you get the Galaxy S8, don't use the facial recognition feature to lock your phone. Use a PIN, fingerprint, or the iris scanner instead.

And Samsung should stop touting facial recognition as a way to lock your phone.

Here's a video of iDeviceHelp tricking the Galaxy S8 with a photo: