Fancy using emojis as your password?
If remembering letters and numbers is hard, how about having a passcode filled with emojis? Well, thanks to a British firm, that could soon become a reality.
Tried to input your birth date as password but failed? If you were required to suggest a mind-boggling motley of alphabets, numbers, and symbols instead, you are not alone.
As viruses and hackers grow more advanced, companies are retaliating by requiring users to cook up increasingly complex passwords to safeguard their accounts. Though it is debatable whether convoluted passcodes deter lurking hackers, they definitely do deter our minds from committing them to memory.
Fortunately, the British company, Intelligent Environments brings good news with its Emoji Passcode service, which lets us use emojis instead of traditional numbers for our four-digit online banking pins. According to experts, not only are images easier to remember, having 44 emojis instead of the usual 6 – 10 digits means that there are far more possible configurations – making it harder for others to crack.
The idea has proved immediately popular and many digital banks have expressed a willingness to adopt it, which means that emojis may well have more widespread uses in the future. Although using emojis is far from a from foolproof method to ensure account security, it is definitely a safer – and cooler – take on passwords to spice up our work days.
While the technology is yet to be commercially available, we’re going to go ahead and let our imaginations run wild to churn out some pretty creative ones of our own. Who knows, with the wide range of emojis offered, we could even tell a story in our passwords!
Yijie Zhang
Photo: Intelligent Environments
