Long ago, I had an Android phone with an early facial recognition sign-in feature… and someone could unlock my phone just by holding up a photo of me. Yeah, it was bad.

Fast forward to 2025 and we have Windows Hello facial recognition sign-ins for PCs . Microsoft talks a big game about how secure it is, that Windows Hello can’t be easily tricked, that it’s better than a traditional PIN or password , and that it’s as secure as Apple’s Face ID.

But is it really ? I ran an experiment and tried to fool it. Here’s what happened when I put facial recognition to the test on my PC.

How I tried to fool Windows Hello

If someone wanted to fool facial recognition biometrics, they’d probably do it using a photo of your face. So that’s just what I did—I took a photo of myself (available online

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