Removing disable idle system screenlock as default behaviour for Plasma 5

[Kevin Kofler]

Daniel Vrátil wrote:
> We should *NOT* change the default behaviour. The message to users is
> "there is a lockscreen". That's it. That's the point. It's for new users
> (as well as many existing users) to realize that there is this important
> security measure. The only way to introduce an important feature to users
> is to enable it by default.

How is the "lock screen" entry in the menu not enough to show that the 
feature is there?

> It's not to teach people to rely on their screen locking in 5 minutes, but
> to make sure the screen locks when you forget to.  It's to safeguard your
> data when you /forget/ to lock the screen.

Except it doesn't help, at all. The attacker seeing you leave has a whopping 
5 minutes to START attacking your machine. As soon as he/she did the first 
key press or mouse move (which takes less than 1 second), the timeout is 
reset.

There is one safe and secure way to lock your screen, it is to click on 
"lock screen" BEFORE you leave your computer.

> I never had a problem with my screen autolocking when watching movies or
> playing games (what else are you people doing that you just stare into the
> screen for 5 minutes?) - and if you do, the fix is not to disable auto-
> lockscreen, the fix is to fix the broken software that does not set
> inhibition correctly.

Other replies in this thread have already explained why that approach does 
not scale. Pretty much ANY application would have to inhibit autolocking, at 
which point the feature becomes moot. There's hardly any application that 
cannot display lengthy text and/or multimedia content that takes minutes to 
read or listen to.

> And for the argument that "it's just 30 seconds and few clicks to turn the
> autolock on again". Well it's also 30 seconds and a few clicks to turn it
> off.

My point is that it's 2 clicks, i.e. 1 second, to lock your screen securely 
(i.e., manually), so autolocking is useless.

> Your annoyance does not outweight the added security the automatic
> lockscreen provides.

As I already explained, the automatic locking actually DECREASES security, 
because it mistrains users to not lock their screen manually.

        Kevin Kofler