Financial services firm Intelligent Environments says that emoji-only passcodes could be offered by UK banks within a year.
This is no joke. The company reckons that strings of emojis will be both easier to remember and tougher to crack than PIN numbers.
Intelligent Environments points to memory expert Tony Buzan, who says, “The Emoji Passcode plays to humans’ extraordinary ability to remember pictures, which is anchored in our evolutionary history.
“We remember more information when it’s in pictorial form, that’s why the Emoji Passcode is better than traditional PINs.”
You can choose from a selection of 44 individual emojis, which haven’t yet been revealed. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for guns and bombs, though.
According to Intelligent Environments, there are 7,290 unique permutations of four non-repeating numbers, while this figure jumps to 3,498,308 million unique permutations with non-repeating emoji passcodes.
Surprise, surprise, emoji passcodes are also what youngsters are apparently crying out for.
“We’ve had input from lots of millennials when we developed the technology,” said David Webber, the MD of Intelligent Environments.
“Our research shows 64 per cent of millennials regularly communicate only using emojis, so we decided to reinvent the passcode for a new generation.”
SEE ALSO: Norwegian Airlines creates emoji-only URL
Emojis have barely been out of the news over recent months. Hailed as the world’s fastest-growing language, they’ve received the multi-cultural treatment from Apple, can be used as hashtags on Instagram, and are now being used as URLs.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.