A regular lock screen PIN on your Android phone does the job most of the time, but what if you’re forced to unlock your phone when you really don’t want to? That’s where things get tricky. We recently asked you whether Android should go beyond the basics and offer something more innovative, such as a duress or decoy PIN. Plenty of you had a view about it.
If you missed the original discussion, the idea came from GrapheneOS, which already supports a duress PIN that can wipe everything on your device in one go. It’s a powerful safeguard, but as my colleague Rita pointed out in her analysis, it also feels overkill for most of us. A decoy PIN seems like the more approachable alternative. Instead of erasing your data, it would unlock a separate profile or a sandboxed version of your phone with nothing sensitive inside. That way, if someone forced you to hand over your device, you could still comply without exposing your stuff or alerting the other party to your action.