01/03/2024
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Used in the right way, biometric technology can improve security and accountability for everyone. But as with just about everything, thereโs also a wrong way. More accurately, there are two right ways and one very wrong way to use biometrics.
One right way occurs when you authenticate using the fingerprint reader on your phone. The image of your finger goes no further than the phone itself, to be compared with the image you registered when you started using the phone.
Another right way is when a trusted authority registers you for as part of a permanent record of entitlement, membership, or other purposes. Again, your fingerprint is not transported over a network or stored in a server somewhere.
But if someone asks you to provide your finger image or palm image, iris or any other biometric to be sent to be matched against a database of thousands or millions of such biometrics โ well, just say no. Donโt let them do that.
You can change a compromised password. But try changing the veins in your palm, or your eyeโs iris or retina, or your fingerprint. If someone captures those, they can be you.
We all want to be freed from the inconvenience of passwords, and apps and services that use a biometric on your phone are taking us in that direction. However, thereโs one more thing to be concerned about, and thatโs the question of what happens when you do authenticate to your phone with your fingerprint. If the app then simply sends a string of characters to the server, well, thatโs the wrong way. The right way is with AC technology that makes a unique encryption code each time itโs used.
AC is as interesting as it is old and proven. Itโs really worth learning about. It should be deployed everywhere because it would eliminate huge numbers of problems like fraud, identity theft, phishing, ransomware, privacy invasions (by marketers as well as thieves), etc. Also, it would make everything easier to use. Marketers wouldn't like that because it would allow you to control the use of information about yourself. That's why you don't hear about it.
Thereโs a 2-minute video at https://buff.ly/3te2Wkd that explains how it works.
