A smudgy screen can foil your Android security

Attention, owners of phones and devices running Google's Android operating system: if you eat oily foods or get your hands smudged frequently, you may want to avoid using Android's pattern-unlock feature.

 

Tim Bray, an employee at Google, said he learned of this when his colleagues managed to unlock his Galaxy Tab tablet by looking at the smudge pattern on the glass.

 

"Last year I was touring around with a bunch of Googlers doing DevFests and Developer Days and so on, and an emergency arose when a couple of colleagues had my original Galaxy Tab and needed to use it for something, but I wasn’t there. They managed to figure out my pattern by looking at the fingerprints on the glass and it only took them a few minutes," he said.

 

He said the experience was a "sobering" one, even as he recommended that Android users stick to using the PIN option to unlock their devices.

 

Bray said using the PIN has a huge advantage that it uses a "nice big fat numeric keypad, and I can type it in really, really fast."

 

On the other hand, a separate article on tech site CNET by by Stephen Shankland noted a "worse" problem for phones that make the pattern visible by default.

 

Shankland recommended that users "head over to Android's security settings and uncheck the default 'make pattern visible' option. — TJD, GMA News