It's starting to look like the Apple Maps fiasco all over again. The latest Kafkaesque turn of events, reported by The Verge, goes something like this: Apple introduces two factor authentication for Apple Ids two years after Google; another in a series of lock screen exploits makes it possible to reset a user's password using only their email address and birthdate; the only protection against the exploit is to activate the two factor authentication; many users found themselves in line with a three day wait to add the authentication to their accounts. Awkward!
Apple moved quickly to close the lock screen security flaw and as of this morning, I was able to add two factor authentication to my own account without delay. But, as Forbes.com's Tim Worstall points out, "something very similar indeed had happened back with iOS 4.1." This is not a new problem and these issues are much too common for a platform that is supposed to "just work."
And if it's true that the iPhone 5s Could Jump Start Mobile Payments, as our Christopher Versace reports, this kind of whack-a-mole approach to security could become a bigger liability for Apple than it has been previously.
As we move from the internet of information to the internet of persons, places and (particularly) things, security and data integrity become even more important. We know information is fungible and content is transitory, but we expect things to be secure and persistant. Couldn't download a previously purchased song from iTunes because of some little glitch? Annoying, but not alarming. But if your iPhone is your iWallet and these kinds of exploits pop up with the regualrity that they have so far for Apple, "Danger Will Robinson!"
Our phones and other mobile devices like Google Glass and Fitbit bracelets are becoming more personal, and with that intimacy will come a radically reduced tolerance for mistakes on the part of users. Heaven help Fitbit if the body fat calculating algorithm on its Aria Scale turns out to be flawed! Fast Company's Kevin Purdy writes that he had a great week with his new Pebble smartwatch, "and then it stopped working!" Watch out.
So if Apple's next iPhone does indeed have biometric fingerprint authentication linked to mobile payment capabilities, that could be a big win for a company that needs another one. But it will have a hard time launching such a product into the cloud of previous iPhone exploits unless it makes security priority number one right away. Right now, it's clearly not.
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