A Chinese man was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for raising his girlfriend’s eyelids while she was sleeping and stealing roughly £18,000 from her bank accounts by unlocking apps using her phone’s facial recognition software, Vice News reported.
The 28-year-old man, who only goes by the surname Huang, waited until his partner was asleep before unlocking her Huawei phone using her fingerprints.
According to reports, the 28-year-old guy from Nanning used facial recognition to gain access to his ex-partner’s smartphone while she was sleeping. Before transferring a large sum of money, he used her fingerprints to unlock her Huawei mobile and obtain access to her accounts. According to a report in The New York Times, the incident occurred in December 2020.
Using the phone’s facial and fingerprint recognition features, the man was able to gain access to the woman’s Alipay payment platform. It all started when the woman, who goes by the surname Dong, fell asleep after being served meals with cold medicine.
Huang provided meals and cold medicine for Dong, who was sick at the time. Huang, on the other hand, put her finger on her smartphone to unlock it and then lifted her eyelids to pass the facial recognition check on payment app Alipay when the woman fell asleep.
Then he transferred money from her savings and credit accounts to his own account, seized her phone and coat, and used the money to meet his gambling bills and live expenses.
The next morning, Dong awoke to find the transfer records on her other phone. After failing to contact her ex-boyfriend, she filed a police report. Huang, who had fled to another city, was apprehended in April of this year, according to the article.
Over the weekend, the story went viral in China, sparking debate about the security flaws in facial recognition systems. In reaction to the incident, a customs agent told Yishou Video that Alipay would compensate customers in the unlikely event of theft, and that users might activate several locks to increase protection.
Huang was recently sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and fined 20,000 yuan ($3,100).