That’s right, Google wants to get rid of traditional password protection completely on Android. How you ask? with something called Trust API.
Simply having a strong password isn’t even enough these days, when all an unwanted visitor needs is the key (in this case, the numbers and symbols that make up your password) to get access to all your information. Trust API hopes to eliminate that by only allowing your phone to function at its fullest only if it recognises you as the owner.
How Trust API works is that it uses a variety of metrics to calculate a “Trust Score” from information collected from the phone. After all, a phone is full of different sensors, and Trust API intends to use them.
The collected information will include things like proximity to familiar WiFi hotspots, Bluetooth devices, facial recognition, location, typing speed and even vocal patterns. Low risk apps like games and basic tools wouldn’t need a high trust score, but banking apps would need a pretty high trust score allow you access.
So in practice, if your phone “recognises you” only then will you be able to use it in its entirety. Which means you probably won’t be able to lend your device to a friend
Google hopes that Trust API will be rolled out by the end of 2016, and passwords might become a thing of the past.
But the question is, how effective do you think this would be if compared to say, fingerprint recognition? let us know in the comments.
