Followers of the Bach Seat know that passwords are evil. I have written about dumb passwords again, again and again. Now a firm in the UK wants us to replace our ATM PINs with Emoji passcodes. The Verge brings us the latest theory to get users to use passwords better than “123456,” “password,” and “12345678.” EMOJI. Yes, those Japanese pictographs that anybody over 15 loves to hate.
Intelligent Environments, a UK firm that makes digital banking software figured most users just don’t care about their passwords. So they created what it’s calling the “world’s first emoji-only passcode.” The world’s first emoji-only passcode offers a choice of 44 emoji that can be used to create a four-character PIN. The company told Verge the 44 emojis can create 3,498,308 possible permutations for non-repeating emoji passcodes. That compares to just 7,290 for a traditional non-repeating PIN.
Replace your ATM PIN with an emoji
The firm believes that everyone loves emojis, so why not replace those pesky digits with emojis? Intelligent Environments is betting that forcing people to use emoji instead of numbers would also stop them from choosing weak PINs. Weak PINs are based on memorable events — birthdays and weddings for example — that might be easily guessed.
The company quotes Tony Buzan, inventor of the Mind Map technique. He adds that the idea, “plays to humans’ extraordinary ability to remember pictures, which is anchored in our evolutionary history.” Memory expert Buzan explains, “Forgetting passwords is because the brain doesn’t work digitally or verbally. It works imagistically.”
The author points out while it is a clever idea, certainly, but don’t get too excited yet. This is not the first PIN replacement we’ve seen. Implementing these ideas is always far more difficult than just coming up with them.
Intelligent Environments presser
Intelligent Environments’ press release is also a little too heavy on the hyperbole (it claims that “64 percent of millennials regularly communicate only using emojis” — really? Only using emoji?) and a little too light on actual industry support. Intelligent Environments’ managing director David Webber told BBC News that the company hadn’t patented the idea, meaning any bank that wants to introduce emoji PIN codes can do so. Although, there’s always the chance that security wouldn’t be increased as everyone picked what is objectively the best emoji passcode ever: four smiling poops.
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There is some research that says this makes sense. But then there is the problem of getting systems to accept the emoji PIN. There are still websites out there that can’t handle a passphrase of more than 12 text characters, what is it going to do with emoji? Also, remember that there are still lots of ATM’s out there quietly running Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system more than two years after Redmond stopped updating the software.
The kids think they are so cool with their newfangled emoji. What about old-school?
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
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