Ladies and gentlemen, the day has come — emoji passcode technology has arrived, and we may soon be replacing our numerical or pattern-based smartphone passcodes with depictions of monkeys, love hearts, guitars and smiling poos.
British company Intelligent Environments have launched the world’s first emoji-only passcode, which they say is mathematically more secure and easier to remember than traditional passcodes.
Intelligent Environments’ new project comes in response to research which showed that nearly a third of Britons have forgotten their PIN numbers in the past, but we’re pretty sure people from all over the world have also been left staring blankly at their phone or an ATM keypad at some point.
Intelligent Environments say emoji passcodes are more secure because there are 480 times as many permutations using emoji in comparison to traditional four-digit passcodes.
As the company say, “Traditional PIN = 7,290 unique permutations of four non-repeating numbers vs Emoji Passcode = 3,498,308 million unique permutations of non-repeating emojis, based on a selection size of 44 emoji.”
Intelligent Environments note that humans tend to remember pictures better than letters or numbers, so emoji passcodes do have some scientific basis. What’s more, emoji was recently named the fastest growing language in the world, and has been referred to as a modern-day version of ancient Egypt’s hieroglyphics.
As of yet, no banks have taken the emoji passcode technology on board, but Intelligent Environments is in discussions with banks which are considering rolling the feature in the next 12 months.
It was announced in May that the world could see 38 new emoji arrive next year, including bacon, selfie, the “call me” hand, face palm, avocado and something called “Mother Christmas”.
Watch Intelligent Environment’s demo of the world’s first emoji passcode, below, and dream about which four emoji you’d use to keep your digital life safe.
