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Long ago, I had an Android phone with an early facial recognition sign-in feature… and someone could unlock my phone just by holding up a photo of me. Yeah, it was bad. Fast forward to 2025 and we have Windows Hello facial recognition sign-ins for PCs. Microsoft talks a big game about how secure it is, that Windows Hello can’t be easily tricked, that it’s better than a traditional PIN or password, and that it’s as secure as Apple’s Face ID. But is it really? I ran an experiment and tried to fool it. Here’s what happened when I put facial recognition to the test on my PC. How I tried to fool Windows Hello If someone wanted to fool facial recognition biometrics, they’d probably do it using a photo of your face. So that’s just what I did—I took a photo of myself (available online), put it on an iPad, and held it up in front of my face. My Windows Hello webcam wasn’t fooled for a second. In fact, Windows Hello doesn’t even see flat pictures as faces! While the Camera app on Windows does register it as a face, Windows Hello knows better. Despite holding up a high-resolution image of my face, Windows Hello kept insisting it couldn’t see me. Chris Hoffman / Foundry There are other ways to potentially fool Windows Hello, like printing out a photo of someone on paper and even cutting out eye holes so you can visibly blink while holding it up in front of your face. But none of these methods work. A flat image just won’t cut it. Why Windows Hello can’t be easily tricked No technology is perfect, but Windows Hello’s facial recognition support is a lot more secure than you may think. To use facial recognition with Windows Hello, a laptop needs more than just a webcam—it also needs a near-infrared (IR) camera and an IR emitter. This combo is what allows the laptop to create a depth map of your face (and that’s why I’ll never buy a laptop that doesn’t have this hardware). In other words: it isn’t just looking at your face, but also checking that the physical 3D shape of your face matches what it expects to see. This prevents a flat photo from unlocking your laptop, and it’s similar to what Apple does with Face ID on iPhones. Mark Hachman / Foundry Under the hood, Windows isn’t storing an image of your face, but rather data on the shape of your face. Microsoft has some technical documentation on Windows Hello that explains it, but the gist is that Windows Hello’s facial recognition focuses on “facial landmark points” like your eyes, nose, and mouth, then takes samples around them. Windows Hello captures all this data when you set up facial recognition, and that biometric data is stored entirely on your computer. That’s why you have to set up Windows Hello and re-scan your face every time you set up a new PC. None of it is stored online. Older facial recognition systems often looked for “proof of liveness,” such as blinking. These were necessary on early systems that only captured images and watched to see if the eyelids blinked. But it didn’t work very well. People printed out photos, then cut eyeholes and blinked through them. Windows Hello’s depth mapping is worlds better. But watch out if you’re James Bond Windows Hello is complex enough that your average Joe won’t be able to fool it. But if you were in a James Bond movie—or you’re being targeted by international intelligence agencies with lots of resources—then Windows Hello could potentially be fooled for real. To do this, the attacker would need to measure your face and build a near-perfect representation of it. I’m not just talking about a papier-mâché head that sort of looks like you, but a life-like replica that perfectly replicates the precise contours of your face. With that, someone could indeed be able to sign in as you. Fooling modern facial recognition’s biometric security is way more difficult than just cloning your fingerprint for a fingerprint reader, and also much more difficult than “shoulder surfing” in public to steal your PIN or password as you type it in plain view. Realistically speaking, Windows Hello’s facial recognition is the most secure way to protect your Windows laptop. Facial recognition is the most secure If your PC supports it, you should be using facial recognition to sign in. It’s one of the best ways to secure your laptop and the drawbacks are minimal. If your PC doesn’t support it, that’s okay—you can always grab a Windows Hello webcam and plug it into your PC or laptop. It’s one of the best PC accessories that are actually worth it. When using Windows Hello, you should also activate the “only allow Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts on this device” option, which you can find under Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options. With this enabled, no one can sneak onto your PC without your face. Chris Hoffman / Foundry Oh, there’s one more risk: if you happen to have an identical twin with an identical face shape, they may be able to sign in as you. But if your twin’s face is even a little different—which is likely—you may be surprised to find that Windows Hello can tell the difference. Subscribe to Chris Hoffman’s newsletter, The Windows Readme, for more PC advice from a real human. Read...

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Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the hot topics on our YouTube show or latest news from across the web? You’re in the right place. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website! I like my laptops weird. Or at least, that’s what I learned looking at the news out of IFA this year. Specifically, Lenovo’s latest concept design: the ThinkBook VertiFlex. This thin-and-light notebook lets users rotate the screen between portrait and landscape mode. Do I like it better than Lenovo’s rolling screen ThinkBook? Not in terms of sheer coolness, no. Do I think I could just buy a 2-in-1 laptop with a 360-degree hinge, prop it on a portable stand in full tablet mode, and pair it with a keyboard? Yeah, I need an ergo keyboard anyway. But would I still consider buying this anyway? Oh yeah. I’m not a coder, but I do a little writing for my job—and having a taller screen helps me see how the overall piece flows together, without having to zoom out or scrunch down font size. And as accustomed as I am to hobbling together my own solutions, it is nice to have a more elegant, purpose-built version. That’s especially so since I assume this would be more affordable than that $3,000+ ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable model. Not automation here. You just grab the screen and rotate it on its hinge. Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry What else would I love to see? Currently on my mind would be laptops that bridge DIY and off-the-shelf designs—like letting you convert a handheld gaming PC into the littlest of laptops. (Conveniently, the lone mainstream handheld with detachable controllers is…Lenovo’s.) I already waxed poetic this week on the show about using a handheld gaming PC without its controllers as a Windows tablet. Dropping a handheld gaming PC into a frame with a keyboard and trackpad, built just for it, would be even more badass. I’d also be into the return of the truly wild, like Razer’s Project Valerie (a triple display laptop). And I’m now hoping for more variations in sizes, shapes, and weight for creator and possibly gaming laptops, now that dogs and cats have united, with the surprise announcement of Intel consumer CPUs featuring Nvidia RTX integrated graphics. (More on that in the news recap below!) We’ve been in a hardware drought on the desktop side—I honestly can’t remember a year quite this slow in a long while, including during the pandemic. I don’t think it’ll end any time soon, even given the startling news about Intel and Nvidia’s partnership on x86 chips. But laptops have been giving a solid boost to my enthusiasm for PCs. It’s been a nice way to shake off the summer doldrums and head into fall feeling more optimistic. In this episode of The Full Nerd In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith dive into the return of five-year old Intel architecture, Lenovo’s pricing for its fancy-schmancy Legion Go 2 handheld, and AMD Radeon market share. We also dive into a discussion around game launchers on Windows, inspired by the news of Microsoft’s tweaks to its Xbox app. (You won’t be surprised to learn that nothing is as good as we’d want.) It also turns out that Adam likes to flout domestic laws (and flaunt it by showing us his haul). I may have also delayed the start of the show by singing the praises of German bread (and cooking in general). Definitely try homemade rouladen, if you can! Honestly, I kind of miss my beard.Alex Esteves / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! (Plus, we did a live build recently, if you’d like to watch us put together our latest PC for the TFN studio.) And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds. This week’s dramatic nerd news Intel and Nvidia (Intvidia?)’s partnership completely took all of us by surprise, of course. But it’s just the peak of the emotional rollercoaster I was on this week, between ominous rumblings about product availability, another full blast of nostalgia, and yet more amazing used PCs finds. Oh, and a scandal that I found truly delightful. Alternative-Run363 / Reddit The Intel-Nvidia deal could utterly rewrite the future of laptops: I’m not the only one on the PCWorld staff thinking about laptops and the impact of x86 chips with RTX graphics. My colleague and TFN regular Mark Hachman takes a different angle, diving into the history of previous SoC architectures and Intel partnerships, as well as the questions sparked by this new partnership. What’s next for Intel Arc? Brad examines the potential implications this new Intel-Nvidia deal could have on Intel’s Arc graphics division, even with Intel assuring us that it will “continue to have GPU product offerings.” So, Doom can run 2.5 years without crashing: It even went beyond the original estimate by the person running this experiment. Nice. Would you eat TSMC honey? No, that’s not a euphemism. Just a sweet byproduct of TSMC’s efforts to restore the ecosystems around its plants. I think I’d try it. Don’t worry, Nvidia will still take your thousands of dollars: For a moment this past week, people thought the RTX 5090 Founders Edition cards might be discontinued. Nvidia quickly reassured everyone that no, it does want your money. The WinRing0 driver issue hurts: Choosing between security and PC fan performance is making me unhappy. (Obviously I’m choosing security, hence the sorrow.) A ton of third-party apps are affected—MSI Afterburner, OpenRGB, and Razer Synapse among them. What a trash haul: Redditor Alternative-Run363’s dad snagged quite a find off the street—a 9th-gen Intel PC with a GTX 1660. Sure, it’s old and dusty. But as the redditor says in response to a commenter, “I can use the PC.” (Also hilarious: this comment.) Tech apocalypse incoming? Ars Technica had a chat with the Consumer Technology Association, and the impact of tariff effects sounds potentially bad for availability of tech products in the U.S. after the holiday season. Combined with other expected shortages, affordable DIY PC building and upgrades might get tough soon. Meow.Ubisoft I love Assassin’s Creed. I love cats more: This DLC was made for me. Rooftop Cat, you’re my number one objective now. I have demands, Ubisoft: Speaking of Assassin’s Creed, a Black Flag remake seems imminent. But I’m not playing it unless they bring back the companion app and its ship minigame. This sleeper build gives me all the nostalgia: But it has none of the nonsense of 1990s-era Windows. (Windows 98 is the reason I still stan Windows NT.) Win-win. There’s a God mode in Windows?! Wait, the thing I wanted most in Windows actually exists? And I’ve just been oblivious this whole time? ajakfldjsa;kfewizs It’s not free, but dang close to it: Honestly, $23 for a 24-core Threadripper and RTX 3080 Ti system seems somehow more of a steal than free. What an auction win. I guess I didn’t have to build a Pi-Hole? Instead of blocking Windows 10 telemetry data, I could have just stripped it out at the roots. AMD X3Ds can hit 1,000fps: At least, they can in some esports games, according to AMD China. And here I am, happy when Overwatch 2 just gives me a consistent 40 to 50fps. (Sometimes the new patches cause awful framerate drops.) I need to demand more from life. Scandal rocks international stone skipping contest: I get that people broke the rules. But everything about this situation is just so wholesome. (Also the science of rock skipping is neat.) Catch you all next week—I’ll likely still be reeling from the realization that fall is starting. Where did this year go? Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...

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