I must admit, I am unsure how to properly encrypt phones anyway. Currently I am using a 4 digit PIN on my phone. Surely if an attacker had access to my phone, that would be trivial to crack. It seems unrealistic to use a lengthy PIN (10 digits or more?) to unlock my phone, because I have to do it so often.
What is a good solution? Perhaps sensitive applications have to encrypt their own data, so that I can access most of the phone functionality with the short PIN, but need a longer password to access certain data. No dice with the address book, though :-(
(I don't trust finger prints, because they seem tricky to keep secret - my latest phone also says that fingerprints may be less secure than a good PIN).
I don't know what kind of phone you have, but iOS has an option to automatically wipe the device after N code failures. Thus the whole San Bernadino phone situation.
Fingerprints are not trivial to obtain, and are even harder to reproduce.
I use a hyper-complicated password on my phone with TouchID, so I only have to enter it once when the phone is booted. After that, I'm on fingerprints. If I were coerced into unlocking my phone, I would just use the wrong finger a few times in order to trigger the requirement to re-enter the password.
> It seems unrealistic to use a lengthy PIN (10 digits or more?) to unlock my phone, because I have to do it so often.
My suggestion: Be an empiricist and run the experiment. I've been using strong 8+ character alphanumeric passwords on my devices for several years, and it’s rarely a bother.
Sometime ago, I even started using randomly generated complex passwords for my work account, and I was astonished by how effortless it is for me to memorize a new such password every 90 days.
As they say, your mileage may vary, but at least run the experiment, you might be surprised.
Interesting idea, although I am not sure which places I would trust enough. Even my home can be broken into. I'm actually working on getting all my data encrypted, even at home, because of the nightmare scenario of a thief getting all my data.
There's trusted devices as well. Maybe you could pick up a cheap bluetooth thing and only turn it on when you don't want to be bothered with passcodes.
Another alternative might be to look into Tasker. You might be able to write a script that will turn off the lock when you're at home and it's during this time range, for example.
What is a good solution? Perhaps sensitive applications have to encrypt their own data, so that I can access most of the phone functionality with the short PIN, but need a longer password to access certain data. No dice with the address book, though :-(
(I don't trust finger prints, because they seem tricky to keep secret - my latest phone also says that fingerprints may be less secure than a good PIN).