No, and that is a deliberate choice rather than a corner we cut. Bolt has no fingerprint reader, and no built-in face, iris or voice recognition. Signing in to your Bolt means typing a passphrase, which is something you can change.

To be precise about the scope: this is a statement about the laptop, not about the internet. A website or an app you use may still ask for your camera or microphone to run its own identity check. Bolt does not do that, and Bolt cannot stop a site from asking.

It is more convenient, which is not quite the same thing.

A password can be replaced. If one leaks you change it in a minute. You cannot issue yourself a new fingerprint or a new face, so a biometric that is ever compromised is compromised permanently.

And it is not as hard to steal as it sounds. You leave fingerprints on the reader itself and on every glass and door handle you touch, and researchers have been lifting usable prints off ordinary objects and unlocking devices with them for years. Your face is on your ID, on the internet and pointed at cameras all day, and cheaper face unlock has been fooled by a photograph. Nobody can lift a passphrase off a door handle.

Bolt itself does not. There is no face recognition in the software system and no face unlock, so the camera is not identifying you when you sign in or at any other time.

A website or an app is a different matter. If you grant one access to the camera, what it does with the image is up to that service. Bolt is planned to ask before any application gets the camera, and there is a physical shutter on the lens for when you want certainty rather than a permission prompt.

Potentially, yes. A bank, an exam service or any other site can ask for camera or microphone access and do its own face or voice check in the browser. That is true on any computer with a camera, and Bolt is no different.

What Bolt promises is narrower and, we think, more useful: there is no biometric sensor in the hardware, nothing biometric is used to unlock the machine, and no template of you is stored on the laptop or in your Bolt account. When a site does ask, you can decline it, and you can slide the shutter across the lens.

Yes. There is a small physical shutter that slides across the lens.

Software can be told to switch a camera off, and you have to trust that it did. A cover in front of the glass is different: it is a fact you can check by looking, which is the same idea as the trust light beside the power key.

No, and that is worth being clear about. The shutter covers the camera lens only. The microphones are separate and are not blocked by it.

Microphone control is handled in software, which means it carries the same trust question that any software switch does. We would rather say that plainly than let a physical shutter imply more coverage than it has.

A small checkmark inside a circle, beside the power key. It follows your cursor: lit whenever the cursor is over something that belongs to the machine, dark whenever it is over a web page.

The toolbar, the sidebar, a Bolt dialog, Settings, My Files, the lock screen: all lit. The page itself, and a page filling the screen: dark. Nothing else changes it.

Look before you click. A web page can draw a box that looks exactly like a system password prompt, and on most computers there is no way to tell by looking. Here you do not have to tell by looking. Move the cursor to the button you were about to press and glance down: if the checkmark is out, that button belongs to the page.

The light is wired to where the pointer is, not to what any program claims. A site cannot turn it on, because a site is never what the cursor is over when it is on.

It is designed so that it cannot. The intent is to drive the checkmark from the system itself, in a layer a web page has no access to, rather than from ordinary software.

We are not claiming Bolt cannot be attacked, and we will publish how the checkmark is wired before Bolt ships rather than asking you to take the claim on faith. What we will say plainly is that it only helps if you look at it.

Cancel it. The checkmark tells you the request came from Bolt; it does not tell you the request is one you asked for. Anything you did not trigger is worth refusing whether or not the checkmark is lit.

On its own, yes, which is why it only ever does one job: lifting the screen lock on a session that is already signed in. A Quick PIN cannot be used at the sign-in screen and it is not a way into your account.

It also cannot outlive the situation it is for. Anyone carrying a locked Bolt away has to close the lid to move it, and closing the lid ends the session and asks for your screen name and password again.

Because a Bolt password works from anywhere. That is the difference between it and the password on an ordinary laptop, where somebody who learns it still has to be standing at your desk.

Registering your own Bolts puts that back. Somebody who steals your password is, by definition, on a machine that is not yours, so the password on its own gets them nothing. The key is the piece you have that they do not.

It is not your phone, so there is no number to hijack, nothing to change when you switch carrier, and no trail of one-time codes in your messages.

Not for your first one. It registers itself to your account the first time you sign in, with your screen name and a password.

Every Bolt after that does need the key, whether it is a second one of your own or somebody else's. Plugging the key in is what authorizes a new machine.

Yes, by entering the owner's screen name. We do not check who is asking, because the lock only ever points at the registered owner and there is nothing to be gained by doing it to somebody else.

It does not interrupt anything in progress. What it does is stop the machine accepting a new sign-in until the owner tells us it is back.

Your own registered Bolts still work exactly as before. A lost key does not lock you out of your own machines, it only stops you signing in on somebody else's until you have a replacement.

Report it lost and we retire it, so a key somebody finds is a piece of plastic. Then order another.

Not on its own. The key is the piece you have; your password is the piece you know. Whoever picks it up still needs the second one, and they are holding a plug with nothing written on it and no clue whose account it belongs to.

It goes in the one you are not using. There is a power connector on each side of every Bolt, so whichever side is charging, the other is free.

Not one per laptop. A key belongs to your account rather than to a machine, and the first Bolt on an account registers without one. So four people in a house, each with their own account and one Bolt, need no keys at all.

You need one if you want a second Bolt on your own account, or if you want to sign in on somebody else's. One person with three Bolts needs one key, not three.

A work or school seat always needs one, every time you sign in, because a seat has no machine registered to it. If you hold a seat, your own account and that seat sit on the same key.

No. Reporting it stolen locks it to you, so it signs in for you with your password and for nobody else at all. The key is for adding a machine to your account, and a Bolt you already own is already on it.

That is deliberate. Losing a laptop is bad enough without also needing the small plug you probably kept in the same bag.

No. Once you report it, that laptop signs in for its registered owner and nobody else. A key authorizes a new machine on your own account; it is not a skeleton key for somebody else's.

There is no session to kick them out of. Closing the lid signs you out every time, so a laptop that has been picked up and carried off is already signed out before it leaves the room.

Reporting it decides who can sign in next, which is the part that matters. Whoever has it can open the lid as many times as they like and it will only ever let you in.

Ending a session immediately, in the one case where reporting the laptop is not enough: it was taken while it was open and still signed in.

You set it when you set up your account. Say it at a Lost and Found counter and whatever is running on that laptop stops.

Yes, because it cannot do anything except take a session away. It will not sign anybody in, unlock a screen, change a setting or reach a file.

That is why it is a separate thing from your password rather than the same thing used twice. A credential you have to say aloud should not be one that gives anybody access.

An optional second password on your account. It signs you in for real, then expires thirty minutes later along with any password you were made to change during them. Somebody who forces you to open your laptop cannot keep the account.

It is also useful if you think somebody read your keystrokes over your shoulder: whatever they saw stops working within the half hour.

Most people do not need it and it is off unless you turn it on. Turn it on if being made to unlock a machine is a thing that could realistically happen to you.

The Quick PIN wakes the screen from the screen saver, with everything still open. It only ever unlocks the machine in front of you, which is why a short one is fine.

The password signs you in. If the lid has been closed the session is gone and only the password will start a new one.

Yes, and that is part of why it exists. A housemate, a partner or a colleague can bring the screen back and use what is already open without you handing over the password to your whole account.

Be clear about what you are giving them, though. An unlocked session is your session: your mail, your documents, whatever you had open. The Quick PIN does not hide any of that. What it does is stop the only way of sharing a machine being to share the credential that controls everything.

The session ends and the Quick PIN stops being useful. Whoever you gave it to cannot start a new session, because that takes your password.

So the access you hand over lasts exactly as long as the session does, rather than until you remember to change something.

Use your recovery codes. You are given a set when the account is made and asked to write them down somewhere that is not a computer, and any one of them gets you back in to set a new password.

If somebody else pays for your account, they can reset it for you instead. That is what a payer can do on the accounts they pay for, and it is how a child gets back into their homework without a support ticket.

If you are your own payer and the codes are gone as well as the password, the account is gone. There is no email on file to send a reset link to and no copy of your identity for us to check against. That is the cost of us not holding one.

Whoever checked out. On an individual account that is you. On a family it is the person who created the accounts and paid the monthly total.

A payer can reset the password on any account they pay for, change or cap its plan, set the FamilySafe cap on it, buy a rating change for a machine registered to it, and release a machine so it can be registered to somebody else. They cannot read anything: not files, not history, not what anybody browsed. Paying for an account buys the ability to administer it, not to look inside it.

Payer status cannot be taken over on a K or T machine, and those machines cannot create an account either. They can be set up by the person using them, signing in with an account made beforehand elsewhere.

Yes, from Settings, under Bolt Subscriptions. The account moves onto your own payment method, you set up your own recovery codes before it completes, and from that moment the previous payer can no longer reset your password or change your plan.

Nothing about the machine changes and nothing moves off it. It is a billing change and a change in who holds the keys, in that order.

Not from a K or T machine. The transfer is an account matter, but the last step has to happen somewhere, and a machine rated for a child is not that place. Sign in on an A or U Bolt, or any other computer, and finish it there.

Yes. Hand them the sealed box and let them get on with it. It asks for a sign-in, and once they are in, the machine is set up.

The account itself is made beforehand, somewhere else: on an A or U Bolt, or any other computer. You create it, hand over the screen name and a temporary password, and they change it the first time they use it. A school or an employer issues a seat the same way, at the K or T level.

The two things a K or T machine will not do are create an account and accept payer status onto whoever is sitting at it. Both are ordinary on an A or U machine. The refusal sits in the machine because that is where it cannot be argued with: no setting behind it and no password that unlocks it, the same as the rating.

An account cap is held in place separately, and more simply: a capped account cannot become its own payer, and only a payer can lift a cap. So a capped account can sign in on any Bolt anywhere — the machine just runs at the capped level while it does.

No, it lights up for anything that came from Bolt. Setting the laptop up, the sign-in screen, the Quick PIN screen, Settings, and every system message including a low battery warning.

Phishing is not only about passwords. Plenty of it is a button: your storage is full, your session expired, a virus was found, click here. A light that only vouched for password boxes would miss all of that.

Because it is what makes the checkmark mean something. If a system box could sit on top of a web page, the light would be telling you that one part of the screen is real and leaving you to guess about the rest.

Anything from us fills the display instead. Light on: everything you can click or type into is ours. Light off: none of it is, whatever it claims.

Because a light that could mean two things means nothing. If it lit up for approved partners as well, you would have to decide which partner, and deciding that under pressure is exactly what phishing is built to beat.

One light, one meaning: this came from the system itself. Everything else gets a dark light and the same answer, however official it looks.

It concentrates the risk rather than adding to it. Fifty passwords means fifty chances to reuse one, write one down or type one into the wrong box, and most people lose an account that way rather than to anything clever.

One password means one thing to look after, and we put two more things around it: a checkmark that tells you when a request is really ours, and a key without which a stolen password cannot put your account on a new machine.

It is less exact, not more. A password either matches or it does not. A biometric is judged: an algorithm decides whether today's smudge is close enough to the stored one.

Set that threshold tight and it locks you out on a cold morning. Set it loose and it starts letting other people in. There is no setting where it is simply correct, which is what a password already is.

Not if you lock them, and locking is free.

A pair can be tied to a household, to an organization, to a single account, or to a single machine. You can combine those: a school can lock a set to the school and to one student, so they work on that student’s Bolt and nowhere else, including on another Bolt in the same building.

Locked headphones play nothing anywhere else. Not quieter, not in mono, nothing: they pair, they report that they are locked, and they stay silent. There is no resale value in a pair that only works in one house, which is the only deterrent that works on something small enough to put in a pocket.

The lock is changed by whoever pays for the account they are tied to, so a pair can follow a child from a school seat to a personal account when they leave.

A level the account may not exceed, chosen by whoever pays for it.

It is set when the account is created. The payer is already there deciding who the account is for, so the cap is one field in that flow rather than something inferred later from whichever machine happened to be used first. Making an account for a nine-year-old and making one for yourself are different acts, and this is where that difference is recorded. An account with no cap is the ordinary case.

A capped account signs in anywhere. Any Bolt, on any plan, in any house. The machine runs at the capped level for that session — same filtering, same volume limit — whatever the plate on its underside says. A child can use a grandparent’s laptop or one at the library and it behaves as their own does.

What holds the cap in place is not where you can sign in. It is that a capped account cannot become its own payer, and only a payer can lift a cap.

Whoever pays for the account the machine is registered to, from an A or U machine.

Both halves matter. A module is sold against a serial number rather than to a person, so you cannot buy an A module for a laptop that is not yours. And it cannot be bought from the machine being changed, so a teenager cannot order a new rating for the K machine they are sitting at.

Lowering a rating is different: it costs nothing and needs no purchase, because a machine becoming more restricted is not something we need to police.

The rating is checked where the computing happens, not on the laptop.

A Bolt does not report its own rating and get believed. The data center holds the rating on file for that serial number, checks it against the cap on the account signing in, and refuses to start the session if the two do not agree.

So a module fitted without a purchase record changes what the plate says and nothing else. The plate and the chipset are fused precisely so the two cannot disagree, and the record in the data center is what actually decides.

Yes, once the current payer releases it.

Without that step the rest comes apart in four moves: make an account on somebody else’s A machine, become your own payer, re-register your own laptop to that account, buy the module. Each step is allowed on its own, and the result is a rating a parent never agreed to.

The release is also the ordinary path for selling a Bolt or handing one down, so it is not a restriction so much as the moment ownership actually changes.

Yes, and it is worth saying plainly.

Somebody with their own money can buy a second-hand A-rated Bolt and create an account on it. Nothing here prevents that, and nothing reasonably could: it is the same barrier as buying any other computer.

What these rules cover is the machine you bought and the account you pay for. Within that, a rating cannot be raised without you, a cap cannot be lifted from a capped machine, and a laptop cannot be moved to somebody else’s account behind your back. We would rather describe that boundary accurately than claim a completeness we do not have.

No. The hardware is yours outright and the module is part of it.

Stopping payment ends the computing subscription, which is what makes the machine fast. It does not reach into a laptop you own and change what it is rated. A K machine stays a K machine, and an A machine stays an A machine, whether or not anybody is paying us anything.

Yes. Settings has a one-press lift with a length attached: an hour, an evening, a day. It ends on its own.

It exists because the alternative is worse. A parent who wants an hour raises the cap properly, means to put it back, and does not — a permanent change made for a temporary reason is the commonest way a protection quietly disappears.

Two things it does not do, and the screen says both before you press it. It applies to higher-rated machines on your own plan and nobody else’s. And it does not touch the hardware rating: a K machine is a K machine for the whole hour. The lift raises what an account is allowed; it cannot raise what a machine is.

When the payer releases the account.

A released account has no cap, because at that point nobody is setting one. That is the path for a child who has grown up and the same path a school uses when a student leaves.

A capped account cannot take over its own billing, which is the rule the whole thing rests on: only a payer can lift a cap, and a capped account cannot become a payer. So the release is the payer’s to make. Nobody is stuck, but nobody promotes themselves either.

No. Recovery codes restore access to your own account after a forgotten password. That is all they do.

They do not change who pays for the account and they do not lift a cap. Writing your codes down carefully is not a route around any of this.

Yes, with one exception. The documents, presentations, images, code and data tools are the same on all four ratings, and so is everything in the interface.

The exception is Messages, which is off on a K machine. Everything else on a Bolt is limited by what a site is, and a site can be rated. A message cannot: the risk is whoever is at the other end, and nobody can rate a stranger in advance.

A rating governs what the machine will show you, not what it will let you make.