Want to express your disappointment? Depressed? Ecstatic? There’s an emoji character for each one of those emotions. Emoji characters are today being used by teens and old people alike to express their feelings and convey messages in a way that would either be socially awkward or not come out well if expressed using words. You see, not every one of us has the gift of the garb to sustain a long and meaningful conversation with a potential catch or write creatively like Jackson Biko so emojis come in handy. Heck, you can even order pizza using just the pizza emoji. Going forward, the use cases of emojis will become diverse. They won’t just be the preserves of social networks like Instagram. You may soon use an emoji as your bank account PIN. Seriously.
Every big tech company and security experts have been trying to get us to shift to using more secure passwords and PINs for quite some time now. There’s fingerprint scanning and iris scanning on the gadgets we use like smartphones, tablets and even laptops. But we still go back to our numerical 4 digit (or more) PINs. I still prefer a four digit PIN to log in to my PC even though my Windows 8.1 Pro system allows me to use a picture password. British technology firm Intelligent Environments is counting on the young people aged between 15 and 25 and the fact that the human mind is unlikely to forget graphics to drive a new product: Emoji Passcode.
Emoji Passcode simply replaces the traditional four digit PIN with four emoji characters. The UK firm says that the four emoji characters are selected from a pool of 44 emojis and that mathematically, they are more secure than traditional methods since they have 480 times more permutations when compared to the traditional four digit PINs.
The firm’s decision to court the young people first in its Emoji Passcode push is based on research that shows that over 64% of millenials use emojis only for communication. It is therefore easier to tap into such users and the Emoji Passcode is likely to find wide acceptance than with an older demographic who are likely to be skeptical about the system’s security and even the need for emojis in the first place.
We are really not sure what to make of the use of emojis as our bank account PINs but if that makes things more secure than they are currently then why not?
