Visidon AppLock – Extremely Accurate Application Protection through Facial Recognition!
by Jonathan Lonczak
Aug 2, 2011 7:37 AM –
Install
Visidon AppLock.Fast, convenient and cool way to protect your mobile device with facial recognition. Protect any application (i.e. SMS, Gallery, E-Mail, Facebook, etc.) on your phone using facial recognition. Convenient and cool way to increase safety of your private apps and content. Visidon AppLock lets you choose the apps to be protected. Your face is a key to open them! Application uses the frontal camera of your mobile and verifies in real-time that the face matches the one allowed to access the private apps.
Price: Free
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tablet 7″, HTC Droid Incredible 2
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Extremely accurate facial recognition software!
- Offers application protection through facial recognition or password/pin!
- Easy to select applications to protect!
- Provides three different levels of security!
- Utilizes multiple facial composites in order to make extremely accurate scans to compare with composites!
- Application launches with start up of phone’s OS!
Cons
- End user has to protect the Visidon AppLock application from being disabled and uninstalled. This is a time consuming and somewhat difficult process.
- Application can be fooled by photographs.
- No option to use facial recognition for phone’s lockscreen.
Features:
Visidon AppLock is an extremely innovative application protection program for Android. The app allows you to lock users out of any application on your phone using either a password lock or facial recognition lock. It is designed to work specifically with phones that have a front facing camera and offers 3 levels of protections: low, medium, and high for its facial recognition feature. It also is capable of turning on automatically with your phone, changing camera angle and resolution for facial recognition, and disabling the locking mechanism until next screen off.
It features a simple user interface with a list of every application on your phone and a check mark beside every application you wish to protect. Unfortunately, in order to enable this application in a way that prevents other users any possible access to your phone it will be necessary to protect: Visidon AppLock, Settings, Market, any file managers, and uninstall applications on your phone. The application does not have any uninstall protection (which is a way to circumvent this application’s protection), so if you do not perform locks on these applications first it will be possible for someone to go into one of these applications on your phone and either disable or uninstall Visidon AppLock completely.
After selecting these core applications and any others that you wish to protect on your phone it is important to set up both a written password and the facial recognition features under settings. I personally use the facial recognition feature as the sole means by which I unlock programs; however you must set up a written password in case the application is unable to detect you properly through facial recognition. You should also select the option for this application to start up with the phone, in order to ensure that your other apps are always protected.
After selecting a pin you will need to set up the facial recognition feature. The phone will show what it sees through the front facing camera and will calibrate the facial recognition software based on still images it takes during this calibration process. Wait for the phone to show between 90% and 100% accuracy then have it save a composite image to its database. The more composites you take at this step the better the facial recognition software will function even on the application’s maximum security setting. I takes various shots of different facial expressions: smiling, frowning, angry, bored, etc. That way the application would have an easier time recognizing me as the authorized user regardless of my mood when using the application.
After setting up the facial recognition I tested the phone’s security lock out on the medium security setting. At this point I had only set up 3 or 4 facial composites. The application locked on to my face instantly when attempting to access one of my locked applications and took only a half a second or so in order to zone onto my face and allow the application to open. I tested this with other people attempting to open the locked application using their facial composites and they were unable to open up the anything, unless the camera was able to see me in the application.
I also tested this feature with a photograph of myself from a few years ago to see if the facial recognition software could be fooled by still photos. Unfortunately, it was fooled by the photograph though it took quite a few minutes for it to lock on to the photograph’s face and to recognize it as my own.
After testing this on the medium setting I tried it on high. On the highest security setting I had to take about 10 facial composites before attempting to unlock the software. The highest security setting is extremely strict and even after taking 10 facial composites it would still only unlock if I mimicked the exact pose I had used in the initial recognition photos. Needless to say, I could not fool the application into unlocking with a photograph on this setting.
Finally, I tried the application on the easy setting. On this mode the application would unlock with pictures of my father, but ironically would not open up to movie covers of Bill Paxton, Vigo Mortinson, Robert Redford, or Mel Gibson. So apparently it is not as easily fooled in this mode as originally expected. I would image that if you found someone with a similar facial structure the application would unlock on this mode whether it is you or not; this would explain why it would unlock to a picture of my father.
Watch on Mobile
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Visidon AppLock
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Visidon AppLock Bypass with Password
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Visidon AppLock Secure Apps
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Visidon AppLock Settings
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Visidon AppLock Self Lock
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Visidon AppLock Password Lock
Usefulness:
Visidon AppLock is extremely useful if you want to lock out applications and sensitive information from prying eyes, but still want to be able to access them easy without having to type in a password each time you wish to use them. The facial recognition software of this application is excellent, and although it may be fooled by photos it is not lenient enough to let just any face sneak through its facial scan. The application is able to gain a facial lock within a matter of seconds and quickly unlocks programs that you wish to use. This process is not a bothersome one either, because you have to be looking at the phone in order to open up the application and so Visidon will gain a lock on your face and unlock the application before you even remember it is there.
The only things that detract from this application’s usefulness is that you must have a front facing camera in order for it to work properly, and that you have to spend a significant amount of time protecting it from being uninstalled and disabled before being able to use it as needed.
The need of a front facing camera is not a problem with this application, but instead a reason to buy a new phone. We always knew that front facing cameras would be good for something and Visidon AppLock is just one proof of concept that demonstrates the amazing potential of this new technology.
As for the lack of native uninstall protection, I think this is a severe hindrance to using it as a reliable protection solution. There are a few ways the developers could fix it. One being a default protection mode that can be selected on launch which will select many applications that could interfere with Visidon AppLock and protects them from the moment of set up. This would still leave some applications with the ability to interfere with this, but would reduce the amount of work the user would have to do in order to set it up initially.
A second way to fix this issue would be an uninstall protection application similar to that of WaveSecure. This would prevent users from being able to uninstall Visidon AppLock without a password or without a facial recognition unlock and then other applications on the phone could be locked by the user as needed.
Ease of Use:
It is extremely easy to set up and use. All you need to do is select the applications that need to be protected and then take a few pictures of your face with the app in order to create a facial recognition database. The only thing that detracts from this area of the application is the set up process for protection as discussed earlier.
Frequently Used:
I don’t have much information that I wish to protect on my phone, but it is such an easy to use application and requires such little time to use that I may begin using it to protect certain applications on my handset. The facial recognition software is so accurate and quick to recognize the authorized user that the it is never an inconvenience to use. This is a big difference from many similar applications I have tested which all were too much of an inconvenience to use regularly.
Interface:
The interface to Visidon AppLock is extremely staight forward and easy to use. It could use a little improvement to the initial protection process of the core application, but the facial recognition is almost flawless and everything was extremely easy to use. One additional feature I would love to see added is the ability to unlock your phone through the facial recognition software. This would be a widely used feature and a huge improvement over similar screen unlock applications.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
AppLock,
Facial Recognition,
Lock,
Lock Sms,
password lock,
Password Protect Android Apps,
Protect Application,
Protect Apps,
secuirity,
Visidon AppLock
Categorised in: Tools
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