Unlock Your Smartphone with a Tattoo
- By Ginger Hill
- Aug 04, 2014
We all know that our digital lives are contained on our smartphones, from sensitive financial information, emails and addresses to photos, videos and our social media; however, do you realize that studies have shown most smartphone users don’t even bother to protect themselves by simply setting a basic lock code on the smartphone’s lock screen? 
While it’s easier to just grab our phones and use them, rather than having to swipe our finger across the screen or tap some combination of numbers, if our phones are lost and fall into the wrong hands, our digital lives, which echoes our real life, can be ruined.
Major smartphone manufacturers have been working on different types of security methods to encourage smartphone owners to keep their phones safe, but these methods range from inconvenient and not totally secure.
Adding to the types of smartphone security methods, Regina Dugan, head of Google’s Advanced Technologies and Products group, talks about a temporary tattoo and even a pill that you swallow to authenticate you to your smartphone. The temporary tattoo, a round, nickel-sized sticker, shimmery copper in color in a spiral design, has a NFC chip inside. Just place the sticker on your skin where it’s easily accessible and tap your smartphone on the tattoo to unlock it.
Sound too good to be true? Well, there are a couple of drawbacks. Your smartphone screen has to be turned on for it to recognize the tattoo and some say it takes longer than just typing in a PIN or drawing a swipe code. It also requires the use of two arms/hands rather than just one and you have to set the whole process up again each time you switch out the old tattoo for a new one.
But, for only $9.99 you can purchase a pack of 10 Digital Tattoos, each expected to last about 5 days each, and try your hand at the biohacking movement!
(Image from The Verge)
About the Author
Ginger Hill is Group Social Media Manager.