Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Identity Check requires mandatory biometric authentication, in addition to a PIN.
- The opt-in feature will engage when using your phone outside a trusted location.
- Google intends to start deploying Identity Check later this year.
Google is in the middle of delivering some major upgrades to Android security right now, as Theft Detection Lock starts rolling out wide, protecting your phone from someone snatching it and running. But that’s just the tip of iceberg, and with all the myriad threats our devices face, Google’s constantly cooking up new ways to protect our hardware and information from bad actors. Today we’re getting a little preview of one of those upcoming features currently under development, as Google announces Identity Check.
We’re all familiar with falling back to a PIN or password in lieu of biometrics. Maybe we’re rebooting a device, and Android insists upon the PIN for extra security, or a stubborn fingerprint scanner just refuses to read our dirty hands and we go with the PIN as a backup. Identity Check is basically the opposite of that.
Instead of using something you know (your PIN) to add an extra layer of authentication to something you are (biometrics — your fingerprint scan), Identity Check lets you mandate that a biometric check is passed in addition to PIN or password verification. The idea here is that even if someone who isn’t you has compromised your login credentials, Identity Check won’t let them make critical changes to your account — knowing your PIN alone won’t suffice.
Like we saw when looking into Google’s work developing this feature, these mandatory biometrics are connected to trusted locations, and Identity Check will only operate when you’re outside them.
We can understand how that might make some people a little nervous (especially if their phones feature less-than-stellar fingerprint scanning hardware) so it’s probably worth pointing out that Google intends to make Identity Check an opt-in feature — no surprises with this one. But if this does sound like the sort of security tool you’d like to take advantage of when the opportunity arises, sit tight for now — Google says that Identity Check will start arriving at some point later this year.
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