Fingerprinting Technology - Using fingerprints as credit cards

I fully agree with many people here.
My first thought when I heard about this sort of technology was that – in my point of view – would be extremely easy to copy. Think about the police investigating a murder for example. All the police have to do is to find some fingerprints and then find the suspect. If the fingerprints match the suspect’s the case is almost closed.
It is so easy to find a good fingerprint. Also think about this: you are in a shop and you accidentally touch a surface made of glass for instance. Somebody, maybe the owner, could later find this fingerprint, copy it and then all he has to do is to try to get access to every bank in the town. Eventually he’ll find your bank and be able to steal your money.
Also somebody has mentioned that it would give some problems if your finger got wounded one way or another. It would probably mean that you should get a new “credit card” i.e. get your new fingerprint scanned into the system. And before you could do that, you would have to prove that it really is you. In my opinion: a lot of trouble.

Now I a better technology probably would be scanning of the eyes. Again you’ll have the same problem if your eye got damaged. But it would be more secure, because it is so much more difficult to copy an eye than copying a fingerprint.

 

 

 

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Well I think that the banks, have to have more security, in my personal opinion the use of the fingerprint is good, but most be combined with the normal credit card and a password to acces. Hibyring this two kind of security, I think that it will be more easy have security for the banks and the clients.

And in a close future I except that the people use chips or something like that to acces very fast to all the information that they want. But we have te be carefull with all the implication that this brings to us, and the change in the all world

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Wow, I thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone's response on FP technology! As the one Hacker (YB) pointed out, security is of the utmost importance.

I'm concerned about security since I have been a victim of Identity Theft myself. It was very strange how it all happened. My credit card that was stolen was one I never used. It was filed away in my house for the sole purpose of being the overdraft protection on my checking account. So I kept asking myself, "how can my credit card number be stolen if I have never used it ever for any purchases ever?" ... well...

I figured it was an "Inside Job." I assumed it was a bank employee turned "Hacker" (no offense YB), and they sold my number all over the US. But I think any Hacker could get into a bank system and steal credit card numbers. I just thought it was strange since I never used that card ever. Of course, my other credit cards I use frivolously day to day, I've never had a problem with...

Well, as Pomjin noted, maybe we'll all be embedded with a barcode soon. Hell, they do it to our pets now, and even children, right? So, we'll never have to worry about the FingerPrinting technology.

Enjoy your day all.

 

 

 

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Eye prints are much more secure than fingerprints, but that's not where we need to get better security. We need access to our accounts remotely in a secure way. Personally, I think it should be done in a "handshake" procedure. The merchant sends a request to your bank/credit company for the amount, then you have to contact your bank/credit company and explicitly tell them that you accept the transaction. To me, that would be so much harder to break, because the security wouldn't go through the merchants at all, it would be strictly between you & the bank/credit company.

But as long as people want easy access to thier money, they won't have the security they want.

-YB

(PS) Any banker that would turn around and sell credit card info wouldn't be classified as a hacker, they have easy access to that info. That's more like embezzlement.

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But can't eyeprint scanners easily be fooled by people wearing special contact lenses?

I think the method you suggested is too long, and would be quie inconvenient for the consumer.

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The first thing most people don't realize is that there is no such thing as complete security. If there was, the government wouldn't have to worry about security so much. Anytime access is allowed for someone, it's possible for others to get in.

As to my suggestion of "handshake" security, it really only needs to be applied to times when you aren't physically using your bank/credit card. Such as over the phone, or over the internet. That's how *most* identity theft is done. Like the person that mentioned having a info about a credit card that they never used stolen. And it's simple enough feature that that could be done on an ATM, or possibly a computer that directly connects to a bank (not through the internet).

Just think, since most people use ATM's fairly often, it wouldn't be that much of a deal to select an option like "pending transactions" and approve/deny them. Or if a bank used callback security for computer transactions that go through a modem. Callback security is good, because not only is it simple, but a hacker would have to have access to the telephone company, or a direct connection to your housephone to access. Callback security is handled like this:

1: Your computer calls the bank, and tells it your account number (or login info).
2: Once the bank gets the info, it hangs up, and calls the phone number associated to the account.
3: Your computer answers, and then you can do transactions like normal from your computer.

It all relies on the fact that it would be difficult to get the phone company to transfer the call to another number without it being detected.


But you are correct in the fact that most people think that any security that takes any more of thier time is too much.

-YB

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I forgot to answer in my other post, yes eyeprint scanners can be fooled, but not easily. You don't leave your eyeprints everywhere. It's not just the color of the eye that the scanner checks, it also checks the lines in your eyes that are as unique as your fingerprints, if not even more unique. Also, eyeprint scanners use a very high resolution digital scanner. You couldn't get an eyeprint from an ordinary photo.

From what I know of the technology, the only way to fake it, would be if you could get a real eyeprint from that person, either from an eye scanner, or a high resolution closeup picture of that person's eyes. And that would be difficult to get.

-YB

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