An important techie (not trekkie) question...

[Rami]

Friends,

By choice and by necessity, I decided to upgrade over the weekend from an IPhone 5c to an IPhone 6s. My old phone had almost no battery life, was over two years old, paid for, and then I kinda shattered the screen when I dropped it on the pavement. (My case had worn out as well...the plastic panel was separating from the rest of the case) So I wasn't exactly devastated by this.

Had no issues setting up the new IPhone, and love it. (Though I use PCs instead of Macs, I love the IPhone interface and have never looked back after using Androids) However, there is one thing that I find disturbing. My IPhone has fingerprint recognition capability instead of passwords, if desired. I balked at the prospect and found another way to activate my phone. To me, the thought of digitally encoding my fingerprint made me very nervous...it struck me as very Orwellian.

Some of the paranoia that went through my head was...

1) If someone gets a hold of my phone and can hack it, if they have access to a 3D printer, they can reproduce my fingerprint.

2) Say I piss someone off. (This is entirely possible, lol) If my fingerprint was able to be obtained, I could be framed for crimes I didn't commit, because my fingerprint could be left at the scene. Do I want Lennie Briscoe knocking on my door?

3) With some reports of border agents declaring they have the right to search your phones, is it a good idea to have this kind of information available to them?

I know this may be overblown, but what are your opinions on this?

[Daveroo]

It's a bit over the top in my eyes, but I too didn't like the finger print thing, nor did I use the password protection, nothing in my phone but a few apps for flight and weather, and some not important phone numbers...but like with my mom, she was talked into the finger print thing, then was to shaky to use it and got locked out. We had to drive 45 miles to an apple store to get it fixed, and then she was told it was now junk. She suffers from tremors among other things and I'm telling ya'll, if your hands shake at all...don't use the finger print security.

[Blackbird686]

I tend to be a bit on the concerned side about "security" for different sites I visit such as banking, retirement, etc. using a desktop PC.. I think you're a little on the cautious side about your phone .. but I don't think you have anything to be overly concerned about. I have an Android (Galaxy) phone and I don't even use it for internet or email, so no security passwords or fingerprint... just a phone, and occasionally I do some texting. There's nothing on it as far as any sort of account number or password so I don't worry too much....

BB686