I really like the fingerprint scanner. For me, it is so fast that when I pickup the phone, it is unlocked by the time I can look at it. I do know some people who claim to have “old fingers where the prints have all worn off.” It’s also a question of threat model. I’m defending against somebody random, like a child who lives in my house, accessing my phone. The government likely can compel me to show them a finger to unlock it.
In the OP, the police didn’t care.
Also, a reminder for those of you who may think your safe because you don’t have banking apps on your phone. If your phone can access your email, then your phone can probably be used to reset almost all of your passwords. To a thief who knows what they are doing (or who to sell it to), access to an email account may be worth more than just the money in one account.
I’m not saying remove all email access from your phone, just to be aware of the vulnerabilities. If your phone is compromised, the first password to change is your email password.
Where are these ATMs , in banks or in convenience stores? Because I know I can withdraw up to $1000 per day from my checking account and I think my savings account has a separate limit.
And before that, I knew someone who made 3 copies of his thesis in progress–one typed, 2 carbon copies. As he worked on it, each night he would line up all the original pages, wrap them in tin foil and then plastic, then put them in the freezer compartment of his fridge, on the theory it was the most fireproof place in the apartment. He would then put one copy in the outside mailbox and the other in his locked desk drawer. In the morning he would retrieve everything and get to work, repeating the security precautions at the end of the work day.
Muggers forced him to transfer money from his bank app, but didn’t take her laptop because she didn’t have a backup of her thesis. Sure. That makes sense. On every level.
I’m just horrified someone in this day and age didn’t keep a backup of their doctoral thesis.
I have pretty much everything on a cloud somewhere. Sometimes more than one cloud. And a backup service. And occasionally I back up to USB. I’ve had bricked phones and dead hard drives and never lost a thing.
Armed robberies of phones, while scary, are not particularly common relative to hackers, and I believe the best way of dealing with them is to use a password manager and two step verification.
I’m also just very skeptical that a thief could get someone to successfully transfer money with a phone app. If that somehow really did happen it seems like it would be vanishingly rare. Someone committing an armed robbery is probably in a hurry to not get caught. So I wouldn’t worry about that bit too much.