"Swipe to unlock" is a part of using smartphones that we take for granted. To me, however, it strongly appears that "swipe to unlock" is a dark pattern with the goal of making users disclose their biometric data.
Perhaps you remember that on earlier smartphones such as the Galaxy S5 and Note 4 from 2014, the PIN keypad or the keyboard for entering your password appeared immediately after waking up your phone from stand-by. You could get right into entering your PIN or password without being forced to swipe far enough.
But now, you first have to go through the inconvenience of swiping far enough and then waiting for the one-second transition animation to finish before you can finally type in your PIN or password (except if you have, like myself, deactivated all animations through the Android developer tools).
And if you dare not to swipe far enough, you are punished by having your unlocking progress reset and you have to try again.
Repeat this fifty times a day and it becomes a major annoyance.
Except, of course, you register your fingerprint. Or your face. And then you get the luxury of immediate unlocking without fumbling around with swipe-to-unlock. But this has a price.
Biometric unlocking (fingerprint, face ID, iris scanning) may be convenient, but you give away your biometric data to your masters at Google, Apple, or Samsung. Once your biometric data is compromised, you can not change it. You can not change your fingerprint. You can not change your iris. All you could do is using one of your remaining 9 fingers, meaning you have one less finger left. And honestly, who would want to unlock with their little finger? Fingerprint unlocking with anything else than your thumb or pointing finger is awful.
Swipe-to-unlock likely exists to encourage users to disclose biometric data. It needs to be abolished.
[I hereby release this text into the public domain (CC0 1.0), with the exception of the Wikipedia quote because I don't own it.]
Wikipedia said:
Perhaps you remember that on earlier smartphones such as the Galaxy S5 and Note 4 from 2014, the PIN keypad or the keyboard for entering your password appeared immediately after waking up your phone from stand-by. You could get right into entering your PIN or password without being forced to swipe far enough.
But now, you first have to go through the inconvenience of swiping far enough and then waiting for the one-second transition animation to finish before you can finally type in your PIN or password (except if you have, like myself, deactivated all animations through the Android developer tools).
And if you dare not to swipe far enough, you are punished by having your unlocking progress reset and you have to try again.
Repeat this fifty times a day and it becomes a major annoyance.
Except, of course, you register your fingerprint. Or your face. And then you get the luxury of immediate unlocking without fumbling around with swipe-to-unlock. But this has a price.
Biometric unlocking (fingerprint, face ID, iris scanning) may be convenient, but you give away your biometric data to your masters at Google, Apple, or Samsung. Once your biometric data is compromised, you can not change it. You can not change your fingerprint. You can not change your iris. All you could do is using one of your remaining 9 fingers, meaning you have one less finger left. And honestly, who would want to unlock with their little finger? Fingerprint unlocking with anything else than your thumb or pointing finger is awful.
Swipe-to-unlock likely exists to encourage users to disclose biometric data. It needs to be abolished.
[I hereby release this text into the public domain (CC0 1.0), with the exception of the Wikipedia quote because I don't own it.]
