The whole purpose of the fingerprint scanner is to enhance security on smartphones and provide additional options for unlocking phones, aside from pins and passwords. Upon its launch, Samsung announced that security features on the Galaxy Note 7 would be enhanced, including with new options for Knox.
A YouTuber recently posted a video in which he uses his cat’s paw to unlock a Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. Needless to say that he needed multiple attempts to succeed and in most of the attempts he got an over 50% match of the fingerprint.
Patience is obviously needed in order to use this unlocking option, aside from a very obedient cat that wouldn’t get annoyed from you taking its paw and continuously pressing the fingerprint scanner.
Luckily, the white kitten featured in the video doesn’t seem to mind and even yawns at the end of the video, showing that it might have been subjected to similar tests in the past.
Joking aside, cat paws don’t really have fingerprints and shouldn’t be able to unlock smartphones, since it means that with patience anyone could break fingerprint protection on someone else’s phone.
In addition, there are many ways to break fingerprint protection and unlock a smartphone using props, like skin friendly glue and a digital camera.
If a cat managed to fool the fingerprint scanner on a Galaxy Note 7, it would probably be best if the owner used the iris scanner and a back-up password to protect his phone. The iris scanner should provide better protection, unless the cat finds a way to fool that one too.
