Abiotic Factor, a co-op survival game heavily inspired by the original Half-Life, has been around for over a year now in early access on Steam. But it has now received a massive 1.0 update, left early access, and made its way to consoles, too. And on

Radio Shack, despite being gone for a number of years, is still in our cultural consciousness. But do you know Tandy? And did you ever wonder how a leather company …read more

12 June, 2025 In our turning points series, design studios share some of the key moments that shaped their business. This week, we meet Accept & Proceed. Accept & Proceed is a London based brand and design studio that works with clients like NASA, Nike and LEGO. Founder David Johnston talks us through some of the decisions that defined his business. In 2006, Johnston took the leap to start his own business, armed with a good name and a willingness to bend the truth about his team… I’d gone through my career learning from big organisations, and one small organisation, and I felt like I wasn’t happy where I was. It was my dad who encouraged me to take a leap of faith and try and go it alone. With nothing more than a month’s wages in the bank and a lot of energy, I decided to go and set up an agency. That really just means giving yourself a name and starting to promote yourself in the world. Accept & Proceed founder David Johnston I think the name itself is a very important thing. I wanted something that was memorable but also layered in meaning. A name that starts with an “a” is very beneficial when you’re being listed in the index of books and things like that. But it became a bit of a compass for the way that we wanted to create work, around accepting the status quo for what it is, but with a continual commitment to proceed nonetheless. Because I didn’t have anyone to work with, in those early months I just made up email addresses of people that didn’t exist. That allowed me to cost projects up for multiple people. That’s obviously a degree of hustle I wouldn’t encourage in everyone, but it meant I was able to charge multiple day rates for projects where I was playing the role of four or five people. Self-initiated projects have long been part of the studio’s DNA and played a key role in building key client relationships. A&P by… was a brief to explore these letterforms without any commercial intent apart from the joy of creative expression. I started reaching out to illustrators and artists and photographers and designers that I really rated, and the things that started coming back were incredible. I was overwhelmed by the amount of energy and passion that people like Mr Bingo and Jason Evans were bringing to this. I think in so many ways, the answer to everything is community. I’ve gone on to work with a lot of the people that created these, and they also became friends. It was an early example of dissolving these illusionary boundaries around what an agency might be, but also expanding and amplifying your potential. The first of Accept & Proceed’s Light Calendars Then in 2006, I was trying to establish our portfolio and I wanted something to send out into the world that would also be an example of how Accept & Proceed thinks about design. I landed on these data visualisations that show the amount of light and darkness that would happen in London in the year ahead. I worked with a freelance designer called Stephen Heath on the first one – he is now our creative director. This kickstarted a 10-year exploration, and they became a rite of passage for new designers that came into the studio, to take that very similar data and express it in completely new ways. It culminated in an exhibition in London in 2016, showing ten years’ of prints. They were a labour of love, but they also meant that every single year we had a number of prints that we could send out to new potential contacts. Still when I go to the global headquarters of Nike in Beaverton in Portland, I’m amazed at how many of these sit in leaders’ offices there. When we first got a finance director, they couldn’t believe how much we’d invested as a business in things like this – we even had our own gallery for a while. It doesn’t make sense from a purely numbers mindset, but if you put things out there for authentic reasons, there are ripple effects over time. In 2017, the studio became a B-corp, the fourth creative agency in the UK to get this accreditation. Around 2016, I couldn’t help but look around – as we probably all have at varying points over the last 10 years – and wondered, what the fuck is going on? All these systems are not fit for purpose for the future – financial systems, food systems, relationship systems, energy systems. They’re not working. And I was like shit, are we part of the problem? Accept & Proceed’s work for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory I’ve always thought of brand as a piece of technology that can fundamentally change our actions and the world around us. That comes with a huge responsibility. We probably paid four months’ wages of two people full-time just to get accredited, so it’s quite a high bar. But I like that the programme shackles you to this idea of improvement. You can’t rest on your laurels if you want to be re-accredited. It’s like the way design works as an iterative process – you have to keep getting better. In 2019, Johnston and his team started thinking seriously about the studio’s own brand, and created a punchy, nuanced new positioning. We got to a point where we’d proven we could help brands achieve their commercial aims. But we wanted to hold a position ourselves, not just be a conduit between a brand and its audience. It still amazes me that so few agencies actually stand for anything. We realised that all the things – vision, mission, principles – that we’ve been creating for brands for years, we hadn’t done for ourselves. It’s a bit like when you see a hairdresser with a really dodgy haircut. But it’s hard to cut your own hair. So we went through that process, which was really difficult, and we landed on “Design for the future” as our promise to the world. And if you’re going to have that as a promise, you better be able to describe the world you’re creating through your work, which we call “the together world.” Accept & Proceed’s work for Second Sea We stand at this most incredible moment in history where the latest technology and science is catching up with ancient wisdom, to know that we must become more entangled, more together, more whole. And we’ve assessed five global shifts that are happening in order to be able to take us towards a more together world through our work – interbeing, reciprocity, healing, resilience and liberation. The year before last, we lost three global rebrand projects based on our positioning. Every one of them said to me, “You’re right but we’re not ready.” But this year, I think the product market fit of what we’ve been saying for the last five years is really starting to mesh. We’re working with Arc’teryx on their 2030 landscape, evolving Nike’s move to zero, and working with LEGO on what their next 100 years might look like, which is mind-boggling work. I don’t think we could have won any of those opportunities had we not been talking for quite a long time about design for the future. In 2023, Johnston started a sunrise gathering on Hackney Marshes, which became a very significant part of his life. I had the flu and I had a vision in my dreamy fluey state of a particular spot on Hackney Marshes where people were gathering and watching the sunrise. I happened to tell my friend, the poet Thomas Sharp this, and he said, “That’s a premonition. You have to make it happen.” The first year there were five of us – this year there were 300 people for the spring equinox in March. I don’t fully know what these gatherings will lead to. Will Accept & Proceed start to introduce the seasons to the way we operate as a business? It’s a thought I’ve had percolating, but I don’t know. Will it be something else? One of the 2024 sunrise gatherings organised by Accept & Proceed founder David Johnston I do know that there’s major learnings around authentic community building for brands. We should do away with these buckets we put people into, of age group and location. They aren’t very true. It’s fascinating to see the breadth of people who come to these gatherings. Me and Laura were thinking at some point of moving out of London, but I think these sunrise gatherings are now my reason to stay. It’s the thing I didn’t know I needed until I had it. They have made London complete for me. There’s something so ancient about watching our star rise, and the reminder that we are actually just animals crawling upon the surface of a planet of mud. That’s what’s real. But it can be hard to remember that when you’re sitting at your computer in the studio. These gatherings help me better understand creativity’s true potential, for brands, for the world, and for us. Design disciplines in this article Brands in this article What to read next Features Turning Points: Cultural branding agency EDIT Brand Identity 20 Nov, 2024

Silicon Valley nerds have been lonelier since Fry’s Electronics shut down in February 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. The electronics store chain was an embodiment of the valley’s tech roots. But Micro Center, an electronics retailer from Ohio, has opened its 29th store in Santa Clara, California. And so the nerd kingdom has returned. I see this as a big deal, following up on the opening of the Nintendo store — the second in the country after New York — in San Francisco earlier this month. After years of bad economic news, it’s nice to see signs that the Bay Area is coming back. No. To answer your question, nerds cannot live at the Micro Center store. But this isn’t just any store. It’s a symbol — a sign that shows tech still has a physical presence in Silicon Valley, in addition to places like the Buck’s Restaurant, the Denny’s where Nvidia started, the Intel Museum, the Computer History Museum, the California Academy of Sciences and the Tech Museum of Innovation. Other historic hangouts for techies like Walker’s Wagon Wheel, Atari’s headquarters, Lion & Compass — even Circuit City — have long since closed. But hey, we’ve got the Micro Center store, and the Apple spaceship is not that far away. The grand opening week has been going well and I got a tour of the superstore from Dan Ackerman, a veteran tech journalist who is editor-in-chief at Micro Center News. As I walked into the place, Ackerman was finishing a chat with iFixit, a tech repair publication which has its own space for podcasts inside the store. That was unexpected, as I’ve never seen a store embrace social media in such a way. Can you stump the geniuses at the Knowledge Bar at Micro Center? Nearby was the Knowledge Bar, where you can get all your tech questions answered — much like the Genius Bars in Apple Stores. And there were repair tables out in the open. There are a lot of things for tech enthusiasts can like about Micro Center. First, it’s not as sprawling as Fry’s, which had zany themes like ancient Egypt and a weird mix of electronics goods as well as household appliances, cosmetics, magazines and tons of snack foods. (The Egyptian-themed Campbell, California Fry’s store that I drove by often was 156,000 square feet, and now it’s home to a pickleball court complex). Fry’s was a store that stereotyped nerds and Silicon Valley, which also had its own HBO television show that carried on the stereotypes. Nvidia’s latest RTX 50 Series GPUs were in stock at Micro Center. The Micro Center store, by contrast, is smaller at 40,000 square feet and stocked with many more practical nerd items. For the grand opening, this store had the very practical product of more than 4,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) in stock from Nvidia (which just launched its 50 Series GPUs) and AMD, Ackerman told me. Some of those graphics cards cost as much as $4,000. Not to be outdone. AMD has a row of GPUs at Micro Center too. “There were people waiting to get to the GPUs,” Ackerman said. On display was a gold-plated graphics card that was being auctioned off for charity. It was signed by Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signed this GPU being auctioned for charity at Micro Center. “I joke that whoever wins the bid should get a Jensen leather jacket as well,” said Ackerman. And this Micro Center store has a good location (5201 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Santa Clara) that is just a six-minute drive from Apple’s worldwide headquarters and (perhaps better yet) a one-minute walk from the Korean Hair Salon. Micro Center had a previous store in Silicon Valley, near Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara. But that store close in 2012 because the company couldn’t negotiate better terms with the landlord. For its return to the Bay Area, Micro Center bided its time and came back at a time when many other retail chains were failing. It proves that the once proud region — the birthplace of electronics — still merits its own electronics store. You can buy dyes for liquid-cooled tubes at Micro Center. Sure, we have Target, Best Buy and Walmart selling lots of electronics gear. But there’s nothing like the Akihabara electronics district in Japan, which is full of multi-story electronics stores and gaming arcades. But this store is loaded with today’s modern top gear, like AI PCs, Ubiquity home networking gear, and dyes for multi-colored water-cooling systems. Vendors like Razer and Logitech had their own sections. Ackerman was pleased to show me the USB-C to USB-A adapter in stock, among many obscure items. And he showed me the inventory machine that could rotate its stock of 3D-printing filaments and give you the exact SKU that you scanned with a bar code. Tech hobbyists can find their love at Micro Center. “That’s super fun. I call it Mr. Filaments,” Ackerman said of the inventory robot. There’s a section for hobbyists who like single-board computing and DIY projects. There’s a set of video, audio and digital content creation tools for content creators. All told, there are more than 20,000 products and over 100 tech experts who can help. It even has the numbered cashier locations where you can check out — the same kind of checkout stands that Fry’s had. The Mr. Filaments robot inventory system at Micro Center. Customers can receive authorized computer service for brands like Apple, Dell, and HP, benefiting from same-day diagnostics and repairs, thanks to over 3,000 parts on hand through partnerships with leading OEMs. I only wish it had a help desk for Comcast. Micro Center has gear to entertain geeks. Micro Center started in 1979 in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a surprise there aren’t more nerd stores, given how ubiquitous tech is around the world these days. But Ackerman said, “These guys are really doing it right, picking and choosing, finding the right cities, finding the right locations. That’s why Charlotte is great. Miami is a big tech hub, especially for health tech. And we’re literally five minutes away from Apple headquarters and plenty of other places. People from HP and Nvidia and other companies are coming in today to hang out.” “Even though this store is big, the CEO (Richard Mershad) is really into curation, making sure it’s the right mix of stuff. He’s making sure it doesn’t go too far afield. So you’re not going to come in here and find, you know, hair dryers or lawncare equipment,” Ackerman said. “You’re going to find computer and home entertainment stuff, and DIY gear. There are components, just like in a Radio Shack, that hobbyists care about.” Dan Ackerman knows how to install a TV on your wall. As for the Micro Center News, Ackerman told me he has around 10 regular contributors and 20 more freelancers writing gadget reviews and other stories about tech gear. It is a kind of refuge for that vanishing breed of professional tech journalists. No wonder I was so nostalgic visiting Micro Center.

Since its reveal, Hell is Us has been something of an enigma. As an action-RPG that hones in on detective-style investigations within a hauntingly alluring world filled with weird monsters to explore, it's a type of game that tasks players to meet it on its strange and unorthodox terms. For its developers, Hell is Us also represents a game that pushes back against contemporary trends of gaming that places its story and gameplay in a neat package and instead trusts players to piece together just what the hell is going on within the corrupted land of Hadea, and how to survive it.After playing several hours of the opening of Hell is Us along with some mid-game dungeon crawling, I came away with a clearer idea of developer Rogue Factor's new-weird-influenced take on an action-adventure game that pushes players to mind the finer details of the world and maintain poise during some of the intense engagements. So far, Hell is Us is a game that makes charting out into a familiar yet deeply alien world feel captivating.Hell is Us - May 2025 ScreenshotsHell is Us takes place in an alternate 1990s where the fictional European country Hadea is in the midst of a civil war following the events of a mysterious, supernatural incursion known as the "calamity." Playing as Remy, a United Nations peacekeeper and former resident of Hadea, he's detained by a mysterious organization following his mission into Hadea to find his parents. With the organization and its leader pressing down on Remy, he has to recall the fateful decisions he made with the surviving factions and how he fought off the seemingly otherworldly creatures known as Hollow Walkers.The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.“The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which focuses on immersing players into a world that takes a sudden and violent turn to the weird and with a seemingly unreliable protagonist recounting his interpretation of events. Hell is Us fully commits to its premise of a bleak setting and being a stranger in an even stranger land, one that feels familiar with its backwoods and small towns clinging onto survival, but feels so disorientingly strange with the rise of Hollow Walkers and portals that have turned the European countryside into an alien landscape.PlayWhat immediately drew me into Hell is Us was its unusual approach to storytelling and immersing players within its strange world. The sense of mystery is palpable in Hell is Us, and I was constantly walking into areas that had grotesque monsters or strange anomalies that drew my eye. I was especially taken in by the plight of the surviving characters, who struggled to endure in their ramshackle sanctuaries held together by duct tape and dwindling hope. This story very much chucks you into the deep end with its narrative and gameplay flow as you explore the different open zones filled with their puzzles and points of interest.What I found most intriguing, and what I suspect many players will have to come to grips with, is how Hell is Us takes a largely unguided approach to gathering intel and charting out to complete quests with no mini-maps or waypoints to help you in your trek. This very '90s adventure game approach puts the onus on players to listen to the details that the surviving characters bring up in conversations and read the well-organized intel from Remy's personal datapad. It's the type of game that demands a certain level of attention, or else you can find yourself wandering at length to figure out where to go next.PlayOuter Wilds is a particular example that inspired the dev team for its approach to a largely unguided adventure game that gradually expands in scope as more players use their growing knowledge. Speaking with creative director Jonathan Jacques Belletête, the approach the devs took with Hell is Us was all about trusting players with figuring out the mystery and embracing the campaign's more methodical approach to progression.Hell Is UsRogue FactorSep 4, 2025"So at first we really wanted to go full hardcore with this game, like players would have a little notebook and a pen to write notes, because that's where we came from when we played games in our youth, but what inspired us was the general fatigue we've felt with this new contemporary era, like games should never have a problem too big for players to solve because you have to reach every type of player possible," said the creative director. PlayHell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road. On the surface, Hell is Us has the makings of a soulslike – and it certainly has some of those elements under the hood – but it goes in a direction with combat and power progression that's more about managing your poise and picking the best moments to strike against enemies that can easily take you out. Some of my favorite moments came using my powered-up weapons to dish out some chunky damage while sending in my drone to stun other enemies off in the wings.Hell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there's a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you're on the desolate road.“The Hollow Walkers in Hell is Us are some of the most visually distinct and unnerving video game enemies I've seen in a long time. They're highly aggressive and can come in large numbers. Still, things get more unnerving once you face off against the powered-up walkers that can summon support enemies that were very much giving The Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion vibes. Once these enemies appear, you'll have to switch up to take them down fast before you can finish off the main walker.PlayMuch like a souls game, stamina management is critical for survival, and I found myself constantly having to be decisive with my skills so as not to overexte nd myself against unforgiving enemies. One interesting wrinkle that took me time to get used to was the fact that health and stamina share a single bar. With your health being your primary source, the more health you lose in a fight, the less stamina you'll have to fight.While you have limited health items, the Lymbic Pulse skill is the best way to help you stay in the fight. Similar to Nioh 1 and 2, activating the pulse immediately after seeing a glow around Remy will instantly restore health and stamina based on the attacks you dish out. It's a very risk-reward approach to combat, and depending on how intense the combat gets, it can be easy to forget to hit the pulse and lose out on health. I found the engagements surprisingly challenging and unrelenting, yet I still felt good about scraping through once I figured out how best to clear out the foes.PlayCombat took the most time for me to get used to, as it's far more survival- and resource-driven than Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Some battles were so unforgiving that I felt unfairly outmatched by the numbers and aggression of the walkers. Still, I managed to rally and rethink my approach by going for it. According to the creative director, he likened their approach to combat with the act of boxing, which is also about managing stamina and dealing with decisive blows when you can."This is us trying to put our own spin on third-person melee combat, and we're always a bit inspired by From Software, but it was important for us to put our spin on," he said. "Like in real life, you pretty much just have one hit point, right? It's all stamina, and when once you're tired and you get hit, you're done. Like, I boxed for a very long time, and when your stamina is done, you're done. So that's where we were coming at it. The more damage you take and the more health you lose, that'll directly affect your efficiency in combat, but we also added in our balance to that with the Lymbic Pulse, to help your restore your health when you do take those risks to lay in damage – and that gives us a bit of a signature to the game as well."PlayI was thoroughly impressed with the visuals and atmosphere of Hell is Us, and it presents such a compelling yet still bizarre mix of fantasy and science fiction. Along with the other games mentioned, another piece of media that served as a key influence was Alex Garland's 2018 film Annihilation, which dealt with exploring an environment that underwent radical and violent change. It presents such an intriguing setting, but at times, the hardened and traditional adventure game approach Hell is Us takes to taking in the details and surviving this world felt a bit too stoic for its own good.Still, I was very invested in the bizarre, new-weird setting that Rogue Factor has crafted, and it so far has the makings of being one of 2025's more original and creative takes on the action-RPG experience. Given that this year saw the rise of Blue Prince's reinvention of a roguelite puzzle adventure, it'd be fitting for Hell is Us to succeed with its own reinvention with its new type of role-playing experience.

Titans of industry cannot come to terms. Despite the literal gap between them being a matter of feet—maybe 30 or so by my count—when their two locomotives come to a standstill in a tunnel with miles of track in either direction, Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro, tyrannical, avuncular) is unable to bridge the final inches with Leland and Reagan (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston, stone-faced). It’s an odd situation that becomes odder still when all parties realize the fate of their multimillion-dollar venture must now come down to a game of chance: and this one a bet on whether a Middle Eastern prince (Riz Ahmed) can sink a granny shot from below his knees while playing basketball’s ugly, redheaded step-cousin, HORSE.  It was at this exact moment I realized Wes Anderson had returned to full, magnificently daffy form. As easily the prodigal Texan’s best film in over a decade, The Phoenician Scheme rekindles much of the mirth that informed so many of Anderson’s early films. It is also the first instance one has had any narrative propulsion or tension since his last masterpiece, The Grand Budapest Hotel. While I would hesitate to place such lofty titles onto Phoenician, rest assured that it’s a balmy good time at the cinema where longtime fans get to again spend an evening with impeccably dressed cheats, droll scoundrels, and other variants on the unseemly father figure. Take del Toro’s Korda for instance. He begins the film by surviving what is jointly his sixth plane crash and assassination attempt. (The industrialist’s pilots fare less happily from his habit of falling out of the sky.) He isn’t sure who wants to kill him, but he seems confident it’s probably justified. Of his nine children, eight prepubescent boys live at home with him where their resentments already border on the homicidal. And the other offspring, a daughter he never really knew, wants nothing to do with him, even after he promises to bequeath her his entire fortune “on a trial basis.” Indeed, despite being a novitiate nun, Liesl (Mia Threapleton) has a tough time with forgiveness, especially when it comes to a would-be patriarch or patron. She does agree to at least get to know the old man, though, after he decides to gallivant around the world in a bid to save his empire (hence the aforementioned HORSE of fate). Rather boldly they even board plane after plane, alongside Korda’s ineffectual Swedish nanny-turned-attendant, Bjorn (a chipper Michael Cera doing an accent about three clicks south of the Muppets’ Chef). Together they meet a starry ensemble of walk-on cameos and eccentric business partners, my favorite of which is a preternaturally giddy Jeffrey Wright. Yet always operating beneath the surface is another tale of resentments between bad parents and their adult children. That plus a kooky murder mystery where Zsa-Zsa somehow keeps avoiding being the dead body. From the name of the protagonist alone, Anderson seems intent to signal to audiences with any degree of film knowledge that he is playing once more in the sandbox of his influences. It is hard to imagine a cineaste like Anderson, for example, hearing the moniker “Korda” and not thinking of anti-fascist Hungarian refugee-turned-British filmmaker, Alexander Korda, who directed aesthetic classics like The Thief of Baghdad (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941). Furthermore, Anderson pulls just as much from Korda contemporaries like fellow Hungarian ex-pat Michael Curtiz, particularly when Korda and Lisel wind up at a nightclub owned by Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric). And yes, another movie about traveling nannies and a precocious Liesl is alluded to as well. But the reason The Phoenician Scheme works so much better than Anderson’s last several movies is that while the filmmaker is visibly delighting in his references and what are almost assuredly private jokes between himself and co-writer Roman Coppola, the director also is avoiding the trap of becoming distracted by the aesthetics. Phoenician is still a beautifully designed world of straight lines and adroit square compositions, courtesy of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, where nothing feels natural. Not even the sun or tree vines discovered after Korda, Liesl, and Bjorn become lost in a jungle have any reality about them. But the simple pleasure of observing visual confections is not the be-all end unto itself that it previously was. The travelogue nature of the plot, in which a father and daughter go on an odyssey of unconventional boardroom meetings that include assassins, freedom fighters, and organized crime bigwigs, provides a skeletal structure where Anderson can graft on his increasing preference for narrative vignettes, but there is an emotional spine as well between Korda and Liesl that makes both the jokes and the pathos ebullient. Del Toro has never seemed bigger or more unshackled than as Zsa-zsa. Like most Anderson protagonists, Korda rarely speaks above a polite monotone, but his double-breasted confidence and adventurism provides del Toro with a refreshingly uninhibited floorspace. It also pairs nicely when bantering with Threapleton, a real discovery of a young talent who plays a nun with conviction, even as the twinge of curling judgment on her smile suggests she may never see Heaven. But then she dryly must channel the patience of Job when dodging the advances of a tipsy Bjorn (again, Cera is having too much fun) and the would-be buy-offs of an absentee father. The terrain of an unhappy adult and their aging parent is terrain Anderson has walked many times, but there’s a renewed vigor in his step in The Phoenician Scheme, perhaps because it is the first time he has crossed this territory where he is closer in age to the latter than the former. There is empathy for all parties, though, and new tricks to his whimsy, such as his elegant compositions repeatedly being shattered in close-ups where the camera is assaulted by various subjects filled with so much rage that they literally assail the fourth wall. The Phoenician Scheme is simply a lovely work from an artist with a fresh spring in his step. If you already count yourself among his admirers, it’s a return to form with moments of divine inspiration (just wait until you see who he cast as God). For the rest, it may not cause conversion, but it’s certainly worth sharing some communion wine over. The Phoenician Scheme premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18. It opens in limited release on May 30 and wide on June 6. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Published May 25, 2025 10:00am EDT close A skydiver lost his iPhone during a 14,000-foot fall, but, miraculously, it survived without a scratch A skydiver lost his iPhone during a 14,000-foot fall, but the phone miraculously survived without a scratch. Fingerprint sensors have been around for quite some time, and they’ve become a standard feature in most smartphones. Apple introduced Touch ID on the iPhone 5s in 2013. Since then, it has appeared on 12 major iPhone models (and some iPads as well). Though Apple removed it from most phones after the iPhone 8, it’s still found in the iPhone SE series. On the flip side, almost every Android phone on the market has a fingerprint scanner. But are fingerprint scanners impossible to bypass? Frank from Deerton, Michigan, asked a similar question that I want to highlight and address because it helps all of us:"Can a website be hacked/compromised with password and fingerprint protection (multiple verification)?"I get what you’re saying, Frank. You’d think that since a fingerprint scanner literally requires your fingerprint, it couldn’t be bypassed. But you’d be wrong. While fingerprint scanners are generally more secure than facial recognition and passwords, they’re not foolproof. In fact, there are several ways bad actors can bypass them to steal your identity. A smartphone on a table   (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)5 ways bad actors can bypass fingerprint scannersThere are multiple ways hackers use to bypass fingerprint scanners. Below, I will discuss five of the more prominent methods. 1. Masterprints and DeepMasterPrintsHackers exploit the concept of "masterprints," which are fingerprints engineered to match multiple individuals' prints. Researchers at NYU Tandon developed "DeepMasterPrints" using machine learning to generate synthetic fingerprints that can deceive sensors by mimicking common fingerprint features. These artificial prints can match with a significant percentage of stored fingerprints, especially on devices with less stringent security settings. 2. Forged fingerprints using 3D printingAnother trick hackers use is making fake fingerprints. They can lift prints off things you’ve touched and then use stuff like fabric glue or even 3D printers to make molds. For example, researchers at Cisco Talos tried out a bunch of different ways to do this using 3D printing and tested them on phones like the iPhone 8 and Samsung S10; laptops like the Samsung Note 9, Lenovo Yoga and HP Pavilion X360; and even smart gadgets like padlocks.On average, the fake fingerprints worked about 80% of the time. They were able to fool the sensors at least once. Interestingly, they couldn’t crack the biometric systems on Windows 10 devices, but they pointed out that doesn’t necessarily mean those are more secure. It just means this particular method didn’t work on them.19 BILLION PASSWORDS HAVE LEAKED ONLINE: HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF3. Brute force attacks via BrutePrintAttackers have found a cheap way to break into smartphones by brute force fingerprint authentication. The method, called BrutePrint, lets attackers get around the usual limits that stop too many failed fingerprint attempts. It works by taking advantage of two previously unknown flaws in the fingerprint system. These flaws, named Cancel-After-Match-Fail (CAMF) and Match-After-Lock (MAL), exist because of weak protection for fingerprint data on a part of the hardware called the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI).Basically, BrutePrint uses a hardware-based man-in-the-middle attack to hijack fingerprint data. It sits between the fingerprint sensor and the phone’s secure area (called the Trusted Execution Environment) and tries as many fingerprint images as needed until it finds a match. The relieving part is that the attacker needs to have physical access to the phone for this method to work.4. Side-channel attacks with PrintListenerPrintListener is a side-channel attack that captures the sound of a finger swiping on a screen to extract fingerprint features. It might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but researchers have already built a proof of concept. By analyzing the friction sounds, attackers can reconstruct fingerprint patterns, potentially enhancing the effectiveness of masterprint attacks.5. Exploiting unsecured fingerprint data storageSome devices store fingerprint data without adequate encryption. If attackers gain access to this unprotected data, they can replicate fingerprints to bypass authentication. For example, in 2024, a misconfigured server exposed nearly 500 GB of sensitive biometric data, including fingerprints, facial scans and personal details of law enforcement applicants. Image of a smartphone   (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)So, can you trust fingerprint scanners?Fingerprint scanners make it easy and fairly secure to unlock your devices. Since everyone has unique fingerprints, you don’t need to remember complicated passwords. Just a quick touch and you are in. Most modern devices store your fingerprint data in secure parts of the system, and they use things like liveness detection to make sure someone is not trying to trick the scanner with a fake finger.Still, no security method is perfect. Skilled attackers have found ways to get past fingerprint scanners using high-resolution photos or 3D-printed fingers or by taking advantage of flaws in how the scanner communicates with the rest of the device. The risk really depends on how well the scanner is designed and how much effort someone puts into breaking it. For most people, fingerprint authentication is quick, easy and secure enough. However, if you are dealing with very sensitive information, relying only on biometrics might not be the best idea. A person using a fingerprint for security verification purposes    (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)6 ways to protect your fingerprint dataSafeguard your biometric identity with these essential security measures.1. Choose trusted phone brands: If you're buying a phone, stick with well-known brands like Apple, Samsung or Google. These companies take extra steps to protect your fingerprint data by storing it in secure areas of the phone that are harder to access. Cheaper or lesser-known brands may not have these protections, which makes it easier for attackers to steal your data.2. Keep your phone updated: Phone updates are not just about new features. They fix security problems that hackers might use to break into your device. If your phone asks you to install an update, do it. Most phones also let you turn on automatic updates, so you don’t have to worry about remembering. Keeping your software updated is one of the easiest and most important ways to stay protected.3. Use strong antivirus software: Install strong antivirus software to detect malware that could compromise biometric data storage. Strong antivirus software offers real-time threat detection, anti-phishing and privacy features to block unauthorized access to fingerprint data. The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe. Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices.WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?4. Don’t rely only on your fingerprint: Using a fingerprint to unlock your phone is convenient, but it shouldn’t be your only line of defense, especially for sensitive apps like banking or email. Always set up a PIN, password or pattern as a backup on your iPhone and Android. This way, even if someone manages to copy your fingerprint, they still need another piece of information to get in.5. Be careful about who handles your phone: If someone else uses your phone, especially a stranger or someone you don’t know well, they might be able to copy your fingerprint from the screen. It’s rare, but it happens. To reduce this risk, avoid handing your phone to people unnecessarily and wipe your screen occasionally to remove any clear fingerprints.6. Only use fingerprint login with trusted apps: Not every app that asks for your fingerprint is trustworthy. It’s safest to use fingerprint login only with apps from known and reliable companies, like your bank, phone manufacturer or email provider. If an unfamiliar app asks for fingerprint access, it’s better to skip it and use your password instead.7. Consider using a personal data removal service: Even fingerprint scanners can be bypassed, and large amounts of personal and biometric data have been exposed in breaches. Using a personal data removal service helps reduce your risk by removing your sensitive information from public databases and data broker sites, making it harder for hackers to piece together details that could be used to steal your identity. Check out my top picks for data removal services here. Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web.Kurt’s key takeawayPasswords are generally easier to hack than biometric data like fingerprints or facial recognition. However, the key difference is that passwords can be changed if they’re compromised. Your biometrics cannot. Most modern devices allow both options, and biometrics can offer an extra layer of security by making it harder for someone else to access your phone or apps. They're also fast and convenient, since you don’t need to remember or type anything. That said, in most cases, your device still falls back on a password or PIN when biometric identification doesn’t work, so both systems often go hand in hand.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPWith the increasing sophistication of methods to bypass fingerprint security, what should companies be doing to stay ahead of these threats and better protect user data? Let us know by writing us atCyberguy.com/ContactFor more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/NewsletterAsk Kurt a question or let us know what stories you'd like us to coverFollow Kurt on his social channelsAnswers to the most asked CyberGuy questions:New from Kurt:Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com.  All rights reserved.   Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on "FOX & Friends." Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.