Why do you lock your smartphone?

Pilgrim
2018-10-09T13:38:18Z

I'm genuinely curious. I'm a late adopter FWIW and am still rocking an older iPhone that doesn't support any face recognition or finger prints. But I don't use a pass code either, and never have, and doubt I ever will. I just don't get it... what are folks afraid of happening if they don't lock their phone? I suppose the "nightmare" scenario would be someone steals your phone and then messages your contacts asking for $. Is that it?

I've always practiced greater digital security than physical security (counting the phone unlock as physical) as I think it much more likely that a ne'er-do-well would attack some large company than to single me out in person. I mean if the FBI or some hacker is going through my garbage then I probably have larger problems, right?

For me it's cost/benefit - swiping/fingerprinting/face IDing multiple times a day is not worth the slim chance that my phone is stolen by someone who going to use the info in it for something nefarious. I wouldn't lock my car if I was in/out of 20x a day, I just wouldn't leave anything terribly valuable in it.

Please let me know why locking your phone is/isn't important to you.

EDIT: To be clear, I have one banking app and it requires an additional password to get in. It's an app so there isn't a saved password for it anywhere.

EDIT2: Made this as a comment below, but thought I'd add it up here as well - "I find it strange that people in general seem to be OK with putting up with an inconvenience (even though minor to many) that affects them multiple times a day, but we hold large companies almost wholly unaccountable for major data breaches. "

EDIT3: This just occurred to me. We lock our phones, but not our wallets/purses. The argument that a pass-code is a protection against identity theft rings sort of hollow when we consider we have much of the same info on an ID card that we keep unprotected. Some states will even list the SSN on a driver's license.

EDIT4: I'm convinced everyone thinks their personal lives are terribly interesting to strangers and my suspicion is they're not. Only two real cases of bad things happening when a phone is unlocked that I've counted so far: 1) long distance calls 2) pokemon themed contacts.

EDIT5: That said, sounds like the fingerprint scanner is the way to go for convenient security. I'll be checking that out. Sincere thanks!

EDIT6: Some folks said that edit 4 came off as condescending. Not my intention. I was trying to tie in the idea of "everyone being the main character in their own story." I'm definitely not implying that people should leave their phones unlocked because others wouldn't find their lives uninteresting.

I think many have a personal connection to their devices that I do not feel. Intellectually I find that very interesting as this seems less a monetary issue and more a privacy issue. It'd be as if a stranger picked up a lost diary and started reading. I fear my diary would be more like a ship captain's logbook and wholly uninteresting. If I were to have my phone stolen I'd simply change a couple passwords and buy a new one.

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