RIDICULOUS!!! Face ID should stop when iPhone screen solely lighting up!

You can press the power button to open the locked screen without actually having to use Face id and read what is on the locked screen. Then if you want to go to your home screen you can use face id.

This may be deemed off-topic and I may have to create a new thread for this post and I was actually thinking of that but then just came up with this thread and decided to post my question here. So I am considering buying an iPhone 16e and my father told me something that sounded quite plausible to me. So suppose you leave your phone somewhere that can be seen and reached easily, in a situation where you trust those around you. Then someone just grabs your phone, turns the volume all the way down to 0, disables VoiceOver by tripple-pressing the side button, holds the device up to your face, unlocks it and gets away. Even if he/she returns the phone and doesn't delete or modify any of your data so that you don't find out, he/she can always see and even copy everything to another device. You know, there's this option to transfer one's iPhone (i.e., all the settings, apps and data stored on it).

I'm not completely sure of the answer to your question, but I'll give it a crack.

If you're worried about the security of information stored on your phone, you can require Face ID for particular apps. To set it up, double-tap and hold on an app's icon on the Home screen.

I'd be very surprised if you aren't required to enter either the iPhone passcode or your Apple Account password when you're transferring your data to a new iPhone.

In addition, I don't think that literally everything on the iPhone transfers. You probably need to set up some accounts and services again on the new device, which would be impossible if someone doesn't know your passwords.

Finally, you can view a list of the devices signed into your Apple Account on the Apple website.

First, you can make it so FaceID requires attention to unlock, which means that you should be looking at your device with open eyes for it to unlock. And even if you don't turn that option on, I think it automatically gets enabled when VoiceOver gets turned off. Second, how likely is it for all that to happen? They'd have to know how to turn off VoiceOver, which means you explicitly told them how to, or they dedicated enough time to looking up accessibility shortcuts, assuming they know that such a feature exists without you telling them for some reason. They'd have to execute a bunch of steps flawlessly, and you'd have to have somehow lost track of your phone or not heard it being picked up. Which means you are somewhere loud, probably a public area, in which case you shouldn't leave your phone on a public surface. It should ideally be on you at all times when there's a chance of somebody taking it from you. Finally, if there’s something you desperately want others not to see, you can always hide the app or require a secondary Face ID check when the app is opened, or both. It is far easier for them to overhear your passcode, see you entering it while looking over your shoulder, do something they shouldn’t when you’ve given them access to your phone already, such as to look at something or whatever, etc. etc.

Hi Corsia,

There is a setting that controls how and when notification previews are displayed. The default is to only display notification previews when unlocked, but you can also set it to "Always," or "Never." Go to Settings> Notifications and then navigate to "Show Previews..." When set to "Always," notification previews *should* be shown on the Lock Screen, even if you haven't unlocked the device.

Hope this helps!

While I personally believe TouchID is far more secure than FaceID, and I'm sure others will disagree with me, I have some advice that might make your life a touch easier.
1. Unlocking your device versus reviewing the lock screen. If you, for example, just want to check out a notification, just point the face of your phone slightly away from your actual face. For example, angle your phone away, and tap your side button. This will wake the phone up, but not allow FaceID to unlock it, since it will not be able to see your face. That way, you can then swipe left or right and listen to Notifications, etc.
2. Using biometrics on specific apps is plausible. I currently have an older model iPhone, an SE 2022. I have certain apps set up, so that you cannot even open them without TouchID. One of those apps is the Notes app. I have some very sensitive notes with information I would not ever want anyone else to be able to get ahold of. So, when I double tap on the Notes app on the home screen, it asked for TouchID. Further still, certain notes are password/biometric protected. So even though I have used my biometrics to open the application, I have to use it again on specific notes.

HTH.

Edited for typos

1. Face ID or Touch ID (biometric authentication) is supposed to provide an additional layer of protection, not a security vulnerability. If it is using Face ID only for certain apps rather than system-wide that is expected to be more secure, then this makes no sense. If you recommend setting certain apps to require Face ID not instead of but in addition to using Face ID to unlock the device as well, then this will mean two unlocked doors instead of one, but both doors will still be unlocked, so someone who has the keys to your house may get into your room more easily.
2. One does not have to transfer all the data; one can only view and copy what one needs, without having to enter the passcode.
3. Setting Face ID to require attention is yet another issue. I've never used Face ID myself, as I have an iPhone SE 2022 (AKA 3rd Gen) that has a tactile home button and fingerprint recognizer. According to what I read on AppleVis, though, blind users are advised to disable the attention setting, as they may not be able to look at the front camera.
4. As for those trying to access your device and data having to know how to disable VoiceOver or your passcode, neither is necessarily needed. Plus, relatives, close friends etc. are more likely to know at least either one or perhaps even both. Besides, you don't have to leave your devices in a noisy public environment. Support you just leave it in a bag, jacket pocket etc. in a room and leave the room, hoping no one touches your belongings.

You have to be present in the same room for Face ID to work. If you're not present in the same room, there's no face for it to scan. Attention is not necessarily impossible, even for totally blind users. I'm totally blind and I use attention all the time. As per setting it so specific apps require Face ID, it's redundancy. They need to hold the phone up in front of your face twice for it to work. They can't just do it once and be done with it. Maybe they succeed the first time but fail the second time. Finally, it's a case of situational awareness. How easy is it really for someone to grab your phone from a bag or whatever, hold it in front of you for like five seconds, hold it again for another five seconds. Maybe fiddle with the volume and side buttons and go tap, tap, tapping on the screen without you noticing. There has to be some part of your brain that's like... "Hold up, what's going on here?"

If you are lucky notification reads your messages and others. Sad VO does not read them and tend to lock on the middle of reading them, even when lock screen it says show notifications, when I tap on it and tried to read one, it locks and vo does not read them.

1. You leave the device in a place where you're comfortable and can say no one will likely touch it.
2. You leave this place, leaving the device there.
3. Someone takes the device, mutes the volume and disables VoiceOver, without you ever noticing any of that, as you're not present.
4. This person holds up the device to your face, either still totally unnoticed, or perhaps even telling you (s)he's taking a selfie using his/her own device?

You can hard lock your device so that It'll require you to enter your passcode the next time it unlocks. Personally I don't see this as a problem as I always have my phone on me but yeah, if that seems to be a huge issue from the scenarios your outlining, that would be a fix. But per this article,
The first is hard-locking. When you hard-lock your iPhone or iPad, it enters a mode that requires the device passcode to unlock. With recent iPhones and iPads, you enter this mode the same way that you turn off the device: by pressing and holding the power button and either of the volume buttons for about two seconds.1 You’ll know when you’ve pressed the buttons long enough because there’s haptic feedback.2 This takes you to the screen where you see a slider to power down the device, and on iPhones, where you can initiate an Emergency SOS call or view the device owner’s Medical ID (if they have one). The important thing to note is that you don’t have to do anything on this screen to hard-lock your device — once you’ve gotten to this screen, the device is already hard-locked and will require the passcode to unlock. You can’t use Face ID or Touch ID again until the passcode has been entered. This is important because it means you can easily hard-lock your iPhone without even looking at it, or removing it from your pocket or purse. That you can do this surreptitiously is very much by design.

Just press and hold the buttons on both sides. Remember that. Try it now. Don’t just memorize it, internalize it, so that you’ll be able to do it without much thought while under duress, like if you’re confronted by a police officer. Remember to do this every time you’re separated from your phone, like when going through the magnetometer at any security checkpoint, especially airports. As soon as you see a metal detector ahead of you, you should think, “Hard-lock my iPhone”.

The second thing is to know your rights. Never ever hand your phone to a cop or anyone vaguely cop-like, like the rent-a-cops working for TSA. If they tell you that you must, refuse. They can and will lie to you about this. If you really need to hand it over, they’ll take it from you. And they won’t get anything from it, because you’ll have already hard-locked it, and you’ll know that you cannot be required to give them your passcode.

You can also do the same thing by quickly pressing the side button alone five times. On older iPhones (iPhone 7 and earlier), rapidly pressing the side button five times will immediately initiate the SOS phone call to emergency services; on iPhone 8 and later it just takes you to the same lock screen as when you press and hold the side button along with a volume button. I find the press-and-hold method easier to remember. I think of it as squeezing my iPhone for a moment to protect its contents. ↩︎

This haptic feedback/confirmation only occurs if “Vibrate on Ring” is turned on in Settings → Sounds & Haptics. I feel like this haptic feedback should occur regardless of this setting.
https://daringfireball.net/2022/06/require_a_passcode_to_unlock_your_iphone
But t yeah, you have options. Granted that article's why is slitely different than your scenarios, but same principal.

leaving it somewhere you could confidently say no one would tamper with it and snoop on your data.

Corsia wrote:
"the fundamental issue is that Apple hasn't attempted to completely separate the three scenarios: the locked screen when the device is locked, the locked
screen after unlocking, and the fully unlocked status."

I don't understand your 3 scenarios. I understand discussing the lock screen when the phone is locked and I understand the home screen (desktop) when the phone is unlocked, but when you unlock your phone, the lock screen disappears and the home screen appears. There is no lock screen when the phone is unlocked.

I'm wondering if you're confusing locking your phone with waking up your phone. Personally, I think waking up your phone is practically useless the way Apple has it implemented these days. The phone automatically goes back to sleep before anything useful can be read from the lock screen. If that's what you're talking about, there's been lots of complaints about that here on Applevis.