Windows 10 will be watching you – to lock your PC when you’re away

[sincity]

You know how you can use facial recognition to unlock your PC with a camera and Windows Hello? Well, it seems that with the incoming Creators Update for Windows 10, Microsoft is going to extend this security to allow a computer to be automatically locked again when you walk away from it.

The new feature known as Dynamic Lock (although it’s informally called Windows Goodbye at Microsoft) will apparently detect when you aren’t present in front of your PC, and lock the machine meaning users no longer have to remember to manually do this themselves.

It’ll certainly be a big boon in the workplace, because it leaves no danger of some passing rogue chancer being able to look at confidential data on a PC which somebody has forgot to lock when they’ve gone to get a coffee.

Present in the preview

As Windows Central spotted, this feature is in the latest preview build of Windows 10, although it’s not clear exactly how it functions yet – the site suggests there’s a chance it could just be a simple inactivity lock, as opposed to full monitoring for your presence with cameras (or sensors) and Windows Hello in real-time.

But the fact it’s been nicknamed Windows Goodbye would strongly suggest it’s an automatic locking counterpart to Windows Hello which uses the camera and perhaps more sophisticated detection means.

Although those who’ve tried it with the preview build don’t appear to have had much joy in getting it to work, at least from the comments on the net we’ve seen – but obviously this is still an early version in testing.

Of course, it’s already possible to do this trick with your PC using Tobii eye tracking tech, which will automatically lock your PC when your peepers are no longer detected.

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