Emoji passwords are not a solution

Walking up to an ATM and keying in a pin that includes a poop emoji to take out cash is pretty much the millennial dream. But just because emoji password technology exists, doesn’t mean it will ever catch on, and it definitely doesn’t mean our password problems are solved, according to some cyber security experts.

Last week, UK-based technology company Intelligent Environments announced the world’s first emoji-based password technology, reports motherboard.com. The technology isn’t being used outside of Intelligent Environments’ own banking app just yet, but the company touted emoji passwords and pins as more secure and easier-to-remember than alphanumeric codes.

Because there are so many different symbols, there are 480 times more combinations of emojis than there are of numbers zero to nine. Technically, this should make things more secure and considering way too many of us still use passwords like 12345, it’s high time we came up with new solutions.

“In the immediate term, there’s going to be a huge degree of uniqueness because no one else is really doing it yet,” Troy Hunt, a web security specialist, said. “But three years from now, we could just descend into the same problems we have now. The suspicious part of me thinks people will gravitate toward common patterns.”

If that were the case-say the most common pin was just four red heart emojis in a row, we’d be in the same boat as we are now — lots of people recycling weak, easy-to-crack passwords. Even if people were motivated to think of long, unique strings of emoji, they might have trouble remembering them. And if they can remember, they might not want to have to use a new one for every account.