Frequently Asked Questions | FAQ

Photolok® is a state of the art protected entry system that uses proprietary-coded and randomized photos to replace passwords. Photolok’s simplicity, ease of use and situational security capability gives it a competitive edge.

• Photolok is the only protected entry system to offer situational security protection, which protects against bad actors working in public places and from those who may force you to give them access to your device.
• Photolok does not collect, sell or use information that would violate a person’s privacy.

When you are on the Photolok login page, click “Forgot My Photos” and follow the instructions. You must accurately answer your security questions to reset your account. If you forget your answers, click unlockme@netlok.com to send an email request and we will contact you for a more in-depth verification procedure. Netlok’s verification procedures are designed to protect your account from bad actors.

After entering your email address on the login page, click the Settings button. After correctly selecting your photos on both photo panels, click the camera icon (upper left corner), which will take you to the Manage Photos page.

Manage Photos allows you to add, delete, and label photos:

• Photos can be deleted by clicking the red “X” in the upper right corner of the photo.
• Photos can be added by clicking one of the five categories under the words “Add more photo selections…” When a blue box is clicked, ten new photos are added at the end of the photo portfolio.
• A photo’s label can be changed by clicking on the existing label and selecting a new label from the drop down menu. You have four labeling choices and the labeling process works the same for all labels. All changes are automatically saved within two seconds.

First, as a mobile society, we often enter public places and unsecure areas like hotels, airports, bars, conventions, etc. where bad actors prey on distracted people using their devices. The bad actors either shoulder surf and/or plant cameras to look at your login information (usually, your password), so they can enter your site. To protect against shoulder surfing and hidden cameras, Photolok allows you to label a photo for 1-time use, which means that a bad actor who sees the 1-time photo cannot use it to enter your device because it is immediately removed from your account after you use it one time.

Second, you may be a target of a professional hacker who forces you to open your device in person to steal your information, such as private keys for cryptocurrencies, confidential documents, passwords, etc. To protect against these physical attacks, you can label a photo as Duress, which works like a silent alarm that notifies authorized people to follow a security procedure upon receiving the alert from you.

Enter Manage Photos (see 3 above for the access process). Select a photo and click its current label to see the drop down menu. Click “Duress” and the photo is automatically saved as Duress. You must also complete the Duress information on the main Settings page in order to specify the appropriate people who will be alerted by text and email so they can respond to your Duress alert.

Enter Manage Photos (see 3 above for the access process). Select a photo and click its current label to see the drop down menu. Click “1-Time” and the photo is automatically saved as 1-Time. Since the 1-Time photo only works once and the next time you log-in, it’s a best practice to set it up just before entering a public area.

The Internet and/or Intranet provider offering Photolok for protecting online entry makes that decision. That being said, changing photos only takes a few seconds and there are no major rules as required when setting and resetting passwords. Once you change a photo’s label, it is automatically saved in two seconds. Unlike password changes, changing photos is simple, very fast and the new photo is easy to remember.

You notify Netlok by clicking unlockme@netlok.com in the pop-up and sending us an email. Netlok will respond to your email as soon as possible at which time we will verify your identity and enable your account. The verification process is very secure, and you must be able to answer your security questions accurately in order to be enabled. If you forget the answers to your security questions, we will have to take additional verification steps to protect your account from a bad actor pretending to be you.

The short answer is that it is very unlikely. But even if a person does, each of your chosen photos has a specific code related to you and your account. As it turns out, even though a group of photos may look exactly the same, they are not the same. Quite frankly, you would never know if you have a look alike unless you purposely share your photos with someone else, which violates our security protocol.

The more detailed answer is that our photo library is so large that there are trillions of photo combinations that are randomly selected and offered by the system to each account owner. In addition, each account is securely isolated from other accounts with a multi-layer of security defense system and, therefore, someone could be using the same photos, but they would be isolated and separate from your photo selections.

Since security is our first priority, we have created a multi-layered security structure that defend against hackers. In fact, we have a multi-year contract with a noted, third party security assessment firm that uses hacking teams to try to penetrate our systems. Working together, we continually test and update our defenses to defeat the latest trends and tools used by hackers.