Fingerprints…
I often try to guess which way the world is going to turn out…
Like I was thinking today that in order to combat fraud we will have to start getting rid of all these codes and numbers and passwords; they’re too hackable. And all these credit cards and things are too stealable.
So I was thinking that everything will be replaced with fingertip identity patterns.
Like maybe we will just have to swipe our fingerprints at the ATM and purchase things by swiping our fingertips into a special fingerprint reader machine in the shops.
There will be no need for purses or money…
Maybe our personal computers will be fitted with chips that read our fingerprints too and allow us to log in that way.
Maybe we will be fitted with an internal chip which will slot in just behind our index fingertip. This chip will carry our hard drives and of all the information will be stored in there.
So laptops and things like that will be just a shell… this will inevitably lead to a new kind of crime… it will lead to fingertip robbery.
This is how far I got in my daydream tangent, then the boss walked past and asked me if i was alright!
“Maybe our personal computers will be fitted with chips that read our fingerprints too and allow us to log in that way. ” – they already are.
You are absolutely right — a better way to authenticate (this is the technical term) ourselves to systems and certify our identity is needed. Fingerprints are one type of biometric identifiers, very widely used although not the most accurate ones, but there are also others: iris, palm vein patterns, face (!), voice, etc. Many challenges are still to be solved, but the technologies using biometrics have been steadily improving and many devices already come with biometric sensors on them (including cell phones).
The major problem of the biometrics (any type) is that the biometric information is not secret. By now, it has been assumed that fingerprints are secret, but with the wide adoption of biometric systems, it will become increasingly difficult to keep the fingerprint images secret. Faces are already public (just check at Facebook:-)). So the fingerprint images will be stored in computers, which computers will get hacked, and the images will get stolen in the same way as the credit cards numbers are stolen today. And here comes the big problem: you can cancel your credit card and a new number will replace it, but you cannot cancel your fingerprint (or face or iris) and have a new one… Here come the people (myself included) who are trying to solve this.
FYI:
CCC publishes fingerprints of Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Home Secretary
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/105728
yo i dont understand