【My Sister in law Reluctantly Climbed on Top】

The My Sister in law Reluctantly Climbed on TopiPhone X will change everything when it arrives next month. It'll herald in a brave new notch-filled world with no home buttons and Face ID, a new face-recognition technology that unlocks the phone when you look at it.

Mere weeks away from launch and a month after Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) penned a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook voicing privacy concerns over Face ID, Apple has finally responded to his questions in what's clearly a move to pacify any lingering fears over its new biometric technology.

SEE ALSO: Why you'll be forced to buy a case for your iPhone X

Apple provided Mashable with a copy of the letter Cynthia Hogan, the company's VP for Public Policy, sent to Sen. Franken.

On behalf of Apple, Hogan reiterates how Face ID works using the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera and sensors to scan and analyze a user's face based on depth maps and 2D images it creates. These depth maps of a user's face are comprised of over 30,000 infrared dots that, along with an "attentive face" (you need to have your eyes open and blinking), are then authenticated with ones stored within the phone's Secure Enclave.

Like with Touch ID, Face ID stores the face data in the phone's encrypted Secure Enclave. Data stored in the Secure Enclave is never meant to leave the device -- Apple says it never gets sent to the company or stored in the cloud so it can't be accessed remotely. Hogan even points out that this data isn't saved in device backups, and scanned faces are immediately deleted after they're used to unlock the iPhone X.

That's a relief for anyone who's worried about their device(s) being hacked (and who wouldn't be in this day and age?), but it's also not surprising considering how seriously Apple has always championed user privacy.

Apple's always prioritized first

Recall in 2016 when the FBI ordered Apple to create a backdoor to unlock the iPhone of gunman who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, CA. Apple openly challenged court orders to build a backdoor for the iPhone, arguing that making iOS less secure, even for a one-off situation, would mean weakening the security of the platform as well as encryption overall.

iOS's encryption was designed so that even Apple wouldn't be able to access your on-device data even if it wanted to.

Unlike Google's services, which collects huge amounts of data from its users and sends all that information to the cloud for processing, Apple says it doesn't care to store all your private information in the cloud, where it could potentially be compromised.

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In fact, the company's made big strides to incorporate a mathematical technique called "differential privacy" into iOS and macOS that is able to essentially provide smart, predictive experiences without creating profiles of individual users stored in the cloud. With differential privacy, most of the processing is done on the device, and, for situations where data mustbe shared via the cloud, random digital bits are injected into the data to obfuscate any tracks that could provide a means for hackers to identify any pertinent information and link it back to you.

Security designed for diversity

Going back to Franken's other main concern, Hogan repeated what Apple told us during its keynote: that Face ID is more secure than Touch ID, with there being a 1 in a million chances of someone unlocking it versus 1 in 50,000 with the fingerprint sensor.

As for addressing Franken's worries about Face ID not working properly on a diverse enough pool of races and ethnicities, Hogan shut them right down:

"We worked with participants from around the world to include a representative group of people accounting for gender, age, ethnicity, and other factors. We augmented the studies as needed to provide a high degree of accuracy for a diverse range of users. In addition, a neural network that is trained to spot and resist spoofing defends against attempts to unlock your phone with photos or masks."

Repeating again what Apple already told everyone at its big iPhone event, the neural network that analyzes faces was trained with over a billion images from individuals across different backgrounds who provided consent.

That said, Hogan didn't mention anything about Face ID potentially not working on children under 13 or how if you have an identical twin the chances of them fooling Face ID increases. But you and Franken would have already known that if you read Apple's six-page Face ID Security Guide that details exactly how the technology works.

It's not like Apple isn't aware of people's concerns or is hiding anything. It's been very transparent on what data it collects and how that data is used for face authentication.

Calm the hell down

Of course, Apple spin is still spin, and while we're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on Face ID, how well it works once people get their hands on the iPhone X and start using the facial recognition could play out completely different.

It's inevitable some intrepid hacker(s) will try to crack Face ID just as they have done so with some fingerprint readers and some of the weaker facial recognition systems on phones like Samsung's Galaxy S8. But while it's easy to fear monger, it's also important to understand that these hacks, which while make for great news headlines, aren't solutions that are easily replicated or even worth reproducing.

Most of us don't live in a James Bond movie.

Most of us don't live in a James Bond movie and we're not important enough that someone will go through extraordinary lengths to break into our sophisticated phone security systems. I'm not saying Face ID will be airtight (nothing ever is), but I also wouldn't throw my hands in the air and start freaking out.

There are several safeguards to Face ID that also make it more challenging to break into over time. For example, Face ID will learn how your face changes over time, whether that's understanding you have a new scar or have facial hair or whatever. If suddenly it notices you don't have a scar, your iPhone X shouldn't unlock. At least that's how Apple says it'll work.

And if you're really not comfortable with Face ID unlock, you can always use a regular passcode. Passcodes aren't the most secure way to lock down your phone -- they can sometimes be brute-forced with the right software and computer -- but at least nobody can force you against your will to stare into your phone or jam your finger onto a reader. Seriously, doesn't that like happen all the time to people? Oh, right.

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Topics Apple Cybersecurity Facial Recognition iPhone Privacy Gadgets