UK firm Intelligent Environments develops emoji-based passcodes
16 Jun 2015
Move over four digit pins, a UK-based tech company has plans to take the pain out of remembering the numerics. Intelligent Environments, has developed a way to log in via emojis and it claims emoji pin codes are far more secure.
According to the company, there were 480 times more permutations using emojis over traditional four digit passcodes.
Additionally, it would prevent hackers from identifying common and easily obtainable numerical passcodes, like a date of birth or a wedding anniversary.
Also, according to experts, the emoji pins will also be easier to remember.
Mind Map technique inventor, Tony Buzan said, the Emoji passcode played to humans' extraordinary ability to remember pictures, which was anchored in our evolutionary history.
He said people remembered more information when it was in pictorial form and that was the reason the Emoji passcode was better than traditional PINs.
''So the company decided to invent a new passcode for a new generation.''
The feature was launched in response to new research that showed the British found it hard to remember numerical passcodes.
According to David Webber, manager director at Intelligent Environments, the company had had inputs from lots of millennials (people born around the end of the 20th century) when it developed the technology.What was clear was that the younger generation was communicating in new ways, he added.
Webber went on to add that his company had not patented the idea. He said he did not think it was patentable, but he thought the company was the first to have thought of it.
He said a number of digital banks had already expressed interest in the Emoji passcode service.
According to cybersecurity expert professor Alan Woodward, patterns and images were already used by some firms as a useful alternative to remembering complex sequences of numbers and letters, the BBC reported.
"I think this is an interesting and potentially valuable step forward," Woodward said.
The permutations and combinations of emojis would require a hacker to run through a much greater number of cycles than they do for so-called 'dictionary attacks'.
However, he said, he was sure there were hackers who would work on breaking into the systems so he thought it still made sense to have some sort of two-factor authentication.
