PinePhone is currently prototyping a fingerprint scanner that goes on the back of the phone. I’m just curious, how important would a dedicated killswitch be for you?
Also, a bit of a tangent, but how do you feel about the fact that the killswitches are hidden behind the back cover instead of easily reachable on the side like the Librem?
What’s the point? Unlike modems, cameras, microphones, the fingerprint scanner is not going to do much until you put a finger on it.
Big hardware buttons to block cameras and mute microphones would be nice.
Problem is that the fingerprint scanner is often on the power button or under the touchscreen.
A properly secure fingerprint scanner implementation on a phone is never supposed to send the fingerprint to anywhere outside the device (and ideally it should be in a secure enclave on the processor), but I guess your confidence in it depends on how much you trust that there aren’t backdoors or security flaws. I wonder if there are any open source fingerprint scanner firmware/drivers though.
fingerprint scanner that goes on the back of the phone
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FIngerprint scanners do have one benefit, in that it’s immune to people looking over your shoulder. With a four or six number PIN, it’s trivial to glance at someone’s phone and immediately see the numbers, and it can also be caught on video cameras.
I would like to have a kill switch on the PinePhone. I don’t know that the placement under the case is ideal but with ever shrinking phone bezels there is a whole lotta unused real estate on the phone’s back side.
Yes, a ‘kill switch’ would be good to have.
