In a comment to my recent post on achieving a digital life, Zarniwoop asks about the risks of putting all my eggs in one basket if everything I need for everyday carry is on my iPhone. That’s a question I often get when I talk about folding as much as possible into my phone.
While it’s a good question, I don’t find the concern compelling. Zarniwoop asks particularly about what happens when the power fails but there are other ways things can go wrong. The potential problems that I see are:
- My iPhone could get lost or stolen.
- I could run out of power or break it.
- Using a phone to do things like open doors and start cars broadens the attack surface for criminals.
The thing is, these are problems for the current solutions as well and I think a cogent argument can be made that putting things on the phone actually reduces the risk. Let’s take a look at each problem in turn.
It’s true I could lose my phone or have it stolen but for me, at least, that’s pretty unlikely. It’s unlikely because I almost always keep it in my pocket when I’m not using it and even if I put it down, it’s always right in front of me and I never leave it unattended. Sadly, I’m pretty obsessive about making sure I always have my phone with me, even if I’m at home.
I’ve never lost my phone or left somewhere. On the other hand, I have lost my wallet. More than once. Wallets are, I think, easier to lose than phones and when you do it’s a lot harder to replace the wallet’s contents than the phone’s contents. Losing my wallet means a trip to Department of Motor Vehicles and hours of soul-sucking time spent waiting in line to get a replacement license. If my license is on my phone, all I need to is replace the phone and do a restore. Furthermore, while documents on my phone are not impossible to get at, they’re a lot harder to exploit than those in a lost wallet. Just ask the FBI.
Similarly, my habits make it very unlikely that I’ll run out of power. First of all, I hate talking on the phone so my iPhone serves mostly as a mobile computer and only secondarily as a phone. I can go days without making or taking a call on it. Secondly, I’m punctilious about charging my phone every night. I rarely get below 90% power. If I did, auxiliary batteries are cheap and easy to obtain. And as much as I hate spoiling the lines of my phone, I have it in a case that does a pretty good job of protecting it from drops so while still a small concern, I don’t worry much about damage.
Finally, security is always a concern but I think those problems are less severe when everything’s on my phone. While it seems like using a phone to open your front door is just asking for trouble, it’s really no worse than the traditional key and deadbolt. These days, keys are ludicrously easy to duplicate from a photo—even a far shot will suffice. And as many hackers will tell you, they’re also easy to pick. Choosing a good electronic lock that provides routine firmware updates—such as the August lock I mentioned in the previous post—will go a long way towards giving you a more secure door.
As for cars, the problems with key fobs are legion. Criminals are intercepting and cloning their signals and using them to steal cars. Worse, according to the article on Hyundai’s plans for a digital key, many people are leaving their key fobs in their cars making it easy for the car thieves. Again, everything depends on a secure solution but with a little care for security—not that car manufacturers are particularly good at that—the digital key should be at least as secure as the current system. It could hardly be worse than key fobs.
This is a long post—longer than the original—but it explains once and for all why I don’t worry much about having everything on my phone. Your circumstances and habits may be different from mine so I don’t insist that you should reach the same conclusions but a least you know where mine are coming from.