A Chinese man was allegedly robbed of 12,000 yuan (approximately Rs 1.25 lakh) while he was asleep. According to a report in South China Morning Post, the man was robbed by his roommates who managed to trick the facial recognition system on his smartphone when he was sleeping.
The robbed man has been identified as Yuan who hails from Zhejiang province in China. The report said that Yuan’s facial recognition system in his smartphone failed to prevent the robbers from unlocking his mobile phone and allowed them access to his bank account that was registered with WeChat Pay, the payments service offered by China’s WhatsApp counterpart, WeChat.
When Yuan noticed that funds from his bank account disappeared without his consent, he approached the police. During the police investigation, it was found that Yuan was robbed by his roommates.
According to the police, the man’s roommates gained access to his smartphone when he was sleeping. They then successfully broke into the facial recognition system of the phone and used WeChat Pay to transfer the money to their own bank accounts.
The stolen money was later returned to the victim, the report said.
Citing an unnamed police official, the report said that market value of the phone was around 1,000 yuan. It, however, didn’t reveal the name of the brand of phone.
“It seems the facial recognition feature on Yuan’s phone isn’t very reliable. We conducted our own tests and found you could unlock it even with the eyes closed,” the report in South China Morning Post quoted the police official as saying.
Many smartphones come with a facing recognition system as a security key and China leads the market in the world in facial recognition technology. However, not all smartphones require an iris scanning to unlock it and therefore they can be unlocked easily.