Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

HACKING FACE ID, the facial recognition system built into Apple's iPhone X, isn't easy. Unless, it turns out, you're a very specific hacker—say, a rare 10-year-old kid, trying to break into the phone of whichever of your parents looks the most like you.

Attaullah Malik and Sana Sherwani made that discovery earlier this month, when their fifth-grade son, Ammar Malik, walked into the bedroom of their Staten Island home to admire their new pair of iPhone Xs just after they’d set up Face ID. “There’s no way you’re getting access to this phone,” the older Malik remembers his wife telling her son, in a half-joking show of strictness.

Malik offered to let Ammar look at his phone instead, but the boy picked up his mother's, not knowing which was which. And a split second after he looked at it, the phone unlocked.

The parents were shocked. Ten-year-old Ammar thought it was hilarious. "It was funny at first," Malik told WIRED in a phone call a few days later. "But it wasn't really funny afterward. My wife and I text all the time and there might be something we don’t want him to see. Now my wife has to delete her texts when there's something she doesn’t want Ammar to look at.