In this digital age everyone knows the importance of keeping your password a secret but did you know that doing the peace sign may be revealing something super important about you?
Research done at the Japanese National Institute of Informatics (NII), has revealed that when people make the gesture they could be revealing their valuable biometric data.
According to NII hackers could be capable of recreating your fingerprint if the photo is clear enough and the lighting is bright enough, Mashable reports.
That’s right we’ve reached a point with technology that hackers could 3D print your thumb to gain access to your iPhone and steal those sweet memes you were saving for a special occasion.
What a world we live in now…
All jokes aside this is actually quite serious and could potentially allow thieves access to valuable personal information.
NII report that flashing the peace sign in a photo taken from less than ten feet away is enough to reveal your biometric data.
Thankfully, and I’m sorry to any criminals reading this who feel offended, but most thieves are too dumb to actually gain access to your phone so you shouldn’t get too worried about flashing Winston Churchill’s favourite hand gesture.
In fact even for an evil genius it would be along way to go just to gain access to your phone, which is about the only thing we use fingerprint verification for daily, requiring someone to make an exact recreation of your fingerprint.
If there was even the slightest flaw in the recreation then our hypothetical evil genius would be powerless to get into your phone and ruin your sweet Reddit Karma or change the info on your Tinder profile.
And lets be honest evil geniuses are too busy monologuing to get into your phone…
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.