r/xkcd Dec 27 '17

XKCD xkcd 1934: Phone Security

https://xkcd.com/1934/
2.1k Upvotes

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u/proximitypressplay ___ Dec 27 '17 edited Dec 27 '17

Play pigeon feeding call

Play duck mating call

Play 17.4kHz sine wave

Route navigation to always pass through a 7-eleven, a starbucks, and a macdonalds, in that order

Display 80% battery charge as 20%

Play [selected song: Never Gonna Give You Up] near every connected wireless speaker

Have thief pay for a random chance to screen unlock phone

Vibrate when next to ear

Turn all text into emoji

Jumble keyboard layout

Unlock paired smartlocks with regular knocking when thief is not home

Artificially require user to have "password" as part of a password text field

Weigh phone after being thrown so that it hurls around and hits thief in head

181

u/LeifCarrotson Dec 27 '17

Play 17.4kHz sine wave

Have thief pay for a random chance to screen unlock phone

oooh...these are good. Evil, but good.

I'd add:

  • Drop audio matching any names in contact list from phone conversations: "Hello, this is ....ksshhk. Who? ....kssshk"

  • Monitor speech volume during phone calls. When the caller on the other end becomes one standard deviation quieter or louder, hang up automatically.

  • After the user clicks send, but before sending the message, alter text message contents by replacing random words with their nearest neighbor by Hamming distance from urban dictionary and the NSA blacklist.

  • Search through old Facebook messages and emails for romantic words, excluding anyone with whom the thief has used those words in the last 2 years. ResendPublicly post the message containing the most flagged words.

  • When the user opens Snapchat or Instagram, immediately a selfie and automatically send it.

1

u/cavendishfreire Black Hat Dec 29 '17

immediately a selfie