Earlier this year, Google enhanced its suite of anti-theft and data protection features with the introduction of Identity Check. The feature, as its name suggests, aims to check if the person trying to access your device is really you.
The extra security layer only kicks in when your device is outside previously-designated trusted locations, and it verifies whether the person using your device is really you by requiring compulsory biometrics authentication. This includes fingerprint and facial recognition checks when accessing sensitive account or device settings.
This makes it so that even if your passcode, PIN, or pattern is compromised, a thief won’t be able to access sensitive data stored on your phone or change critical settings like your Google Account‘s password.
For enhanced security, though, the feature demands trade-offs. You’re forced to authenticate with biometrics whenever you’re attempting to access said sensitive account or device settings outside the radius of a trusted location. This isn’t a roadblock. Instead, it’s more like a speed bump that lets you get to your destination, but with one additional hurdle in place.
Google is now looking to eliminate that hurdle, and it could do so by letting your wearable prove your identity.
Your wrist’s role in security
First spotted by the folks over at Android Authority, code strings in version 25.29.31 of the Google Play Services beta indicate that your connected smartwatch could soon act as a trusted companion — one that verifies that it is indeed you that is trying to access your phone’s sensitive settings outside a trusted location.
It goes without saying that the wearable would need to be on the same Google account, unlocked and strapped, and within close proximity to your phone. In case your smartphone does get stolen, and the thief drives/runs away with it, the distance between the phone and your watch, which will stay strapped to your wrist, will cause Identity Check’s protection to trigger. If the watch, too, is somehow snatched off your wrist, it will automatically lock down too, again causing Identity Check’s protection to trigger.
With your watch connected, Identity Check automatically recognizes you while maintaining your security even when you’re not in a trusted location
Protection on the move with watch
The feature to integrate smartwatch authentication into Identity Check is still in development. If and when it releases remains to be seen.
