Sleeping Woman’s Eyelids Lifted to Unlock Phone, Steal $24K

Facial recognition is becoming a standard security feature on smartphones, but it's far from perfect as a case of theft in China has revealed.

As Vice reports, a 28-year-old Chinese man whose surname is Huang visited his ex-girlfriend (surname Dong) in the southern city of Nanning in December last year on the premise of returning some borrowed money. Dong was ill, so Huang made her some food, gave her cold medicine, and let her sleep.

Once asleep, he proceeded to place her finger on her smartphone screen and opened her eyelids to allow facial recognition to unlock the handset. Huang then used the unlocked phone to transfer around $24,000 from her accounts to his own using Alipay. He then left, taking the phone with him.

The inevitable happened and Dong reported her ex-boyfriend to the police and had the transfer records as evidence of what he'd done. It took until April this year to track him down in another city, but Huang is now facing nearly four years in prison and a fine of $3,100. Apparently Alipay will compensate Dong for the theft, although there's been no confirmation she'll get all of her money back.

Facial recognition works well as a security measure if, for example, your phone is stolen. But it falls down when security is being breached by someone you trust who has you in a compromising position. The solution? Enable multiple authentication options on your phone that require you to be conscious to use, for example, entering a passcode. This should also be a wake-up call to phone manufacturers that facial (and fingerprint) recognition needs to be improved to the point where it can detect if the user is conscious.