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Biometric Payment Arrives in a Store Near You

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the new-string-of-finger-thefts dept.

"A chain of Florida convenience stores has begun accepting fingerprints as payment, using a biometric system called Pay By Touch. The company is a Bay-area startup backed by $130 million in VC cash and the acquisition of BioPay, a Virginia-based biometrics firm that's already done $7 billion in European transactions. From the article: 'The company is a bit puzzled by customer privacy fears. After all, they say, how can using a unique fingerprint for identification be riskier to theft than a plastic card, key chain token, or account number? ...The fingerprint image recorded is not the same as those collected by the federal government or law enforcement.'"

5 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Uhh... by Poromenos1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    how can using a unique fingerprint for identification be riskier to theft than a plastic card, key chain token, or account number?

    Because you leave them on everything you touch?

    --
    Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
    1. Re:Uhh... by MarkByers · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And you can't cancel (change) your fingerprint if someone finds out what it is.

      --
      I'll probably be modded down for this...
    2. Re:Uhh... by eclectro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And you can't cancel (change) your fingerprint if someone finds out what it is.

      And you can't stop the production of gummy bears

      I could probably travel the world on a single package of gummy bears and a set of prints lifted from the sides of soda cans, tossed in the trash outside the convenience store.

      Just remember though, outlaw gummy bears, and only outlaws will have gummy bears.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  2. Company pledges by plover · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From TFA: The company pledges not to sell or rent personal information, or access to it.

    I read this line too and it made me want to scream. "Company pledges" are worth exactly shit these days. "We pledge to protect your privacy and retain the right to alter this pledge at any time." "We pledge to never sell or distribute all of this personal information that we insist on gathering, really, unless we're bought out by another company that doesn't pledge this."

    I don't want pledges. I don't want them to have this info, period. I don't want to receive marketing from them any more than I want it from third parties.

    Now, if there was accountability behind these pledges, such as "We are bonded for a $10,000 per customer coverage to never leak any customer information" or "Under penalties of perjury with a minimum of five years prison time to be served by each member of the entire Board of Directors, we pledge to never sell or otherwise distribute any personal information collected by us. Furthermore, under threat of the same penalites we pledge to use this information only for verification of your account, and never for marketing purposes of any sort."

    Those are some pledges that I'd be slightly more inclined to believe.

    --
    John
    1. Re:Company pledges by sbaker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's hard to imagine anything that's more personally sensitive than SWIFT banking transactions - and they gave those records up to the US government in no time flat!

      These days you have to assume that any item of data you give to anyone is insecure from that point on.

      --
      www.sjbaker.org