What Kanye West can teach us about passcodes

Kanye West did something incredibly unwise during his visit to the White House.  Pulling out an iPhone XS to show the assembled mesdia a picture of the hydrogen-powered aircraft that the “president should be flying in,” West casually unlocked it using the passcode ‘000000’.

Famous people occasionally make security mistakes like this in public, and every time the reaction is the same – ridicule mixed with surprise.

Ridicule because 000000 seems like the sort of passcode anyone could guess, and surprise that West allowed himself to be filmed revealing this naive weakness.

Others are simply bemused that West didn’t use Face ID or Touch ID.

Let’s get some perspective – 000000 is a bad passcode, but the worst choice available to iPhone users is to use no passcode at all, and at least he’s not doing that.  While Kanye’s password is almost the worst choice he could have made (that honour goes to 123456).

Even if West had chosen a stronger passcode, it would have made no difference for the simple reason that he entered it in front of others while being filmed.

Before you laugh at Kanye West...

...ever wondered how often *your* passwords have been seen/shoulder surfed/recorded by mistake? (This makes a good case for 2FA!)

Instead of mocking him for naivety, we should thank him for reminding us of this simple security point – complete with a hard-to-miss demonstration of the principle in front of the world’s press and millions of onlookers.