this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five
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The problem with pins/patterns is that someone could tail you until they see you use it, which for me wouldn't take long. With the expansion of the surveillance state, the secret police would only have to tail you through security cameras for a day or two before you unlock your phone within shot of one.
There is no silver bullet that can make it impenetrable, other than not using a phone. If you're a high value target, keep anything incriminating in some E2EE vault or service like proton, cryptpad.fr, crypt.ee etc. Really just keep any of it off your phone. If you're entering your passwords using a password manager with biometrics, the creds can't be captured by watching you type. Most people don't need to worry about this level of security or paranoia, and if they ever did, should just use a dumb phone and faraday bag than try to outsmart big brother.
Some ROMs have an option to move the number positions when you input a PIN. A decent protection from someone watching you key it.