It’s taken over a year, but as of a few weeks ago, you can actually purchase temporary tattoos to unlock your phone. Motorola partnered with a company called VivaLnk to make and sell these "Digital Tattoos." For $9.99, you can get a pack of 10 Digital Tattoos, each expected to last about five days. Since I happen to own a Moto X (and that’s the only device they work with), I decided to give them a shot — I’m not brave enough to embed a magnet or NFC chip under my skin like some of my colleagues, but I’m willing to try to get a taste of the biohacker movement, albeit in a limited and temporary way.

Sweat and humidity take their toll on the tattoo's lifespan

The round, nickel-sized stickers have a shimmery, copper color with a corny spiral design. My wife was quick to remark at how stupid it looked, but my two-year-old daughter was fairly fascinated with it, likely due to the unbridled curiosity that comes with being a toddler. I’ll admit it’s pretty ugly, but it’s not bad enough that I couldn’t live with it for a week. The adhesive part is only on the outer edge of the sticker but it’s thin and flexible, and it didn’t bother me to wear it. It’s a good thing that 10 tattoos came in a pack; thanks to the humid July weather and the fact that I shower daily, I burned through three of them within a week.

The tattoo is best placed where you can easily touch it with your phone, so I put it on the underside of my right wrist. (Being a lefty, I usually hold my phone in my left hand.) The idea is to tap the phone on the tattoo to unlock it instead of using a traditional pattern or PIN lock code. The Moto X sees the tattoo as if it were a Skip device, and once you’ve set up the lockscreen to unlock via NFC, the phone’s security screen can be bypassed with just a tap.