Rutgers University researchers have performed the first study of free-form gesture passwords for smartphones in the field. Free-form gesture passwords allow people to draw a password of any shape with any number of fingers, according to Janne Lindqvist, study coauthor and an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the School of Engineering and a member of WINLAB.

The Rutgers group's results, combined with its previous studies, show that free-form gesture passwords are a serious alternative to text or other log-in methods, especially for mobile devices, according to Lindqvist. Free-form gesture passwords are very suitable for touchscreens, faster to use, easy to remember and hard to guess.