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Biometric Payment Arrives in a Store Near You
"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.'"
Some people's fingerprints can't be scanned by these machines... Last year I went to Florida and they have fingerprint machines at all the big theme parts and at the airport. None of these machines could pick up my prints... And every second time I used them I got rejected ... So this flawless technology is anything but... I do nothing special with my hands, so it must be one of those "from birth" things... But if you're unlucky like I am then don't expect to be paying with your fingers any time soon.
I am not looking forward to going back though American customs as I know the fingerprint machine will reject my prints and I'll get sent home or something crazy.
"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?"
Just look at murder victims whose hands have been lopped off to hide their identities. It doesn't take much of a (morbid) leap of logic that someone could hold onto a thumb, and surrepticiously use it to withdraw someone's entire finances.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Scuttlemonkey wrote "An anonymous reader writes..." despite the fact that this is my journal entry, and says qo quite clearly at the top of the story: "Journal written by anaesthetica (596507) and posted by ScuttleMonkey on 14:12 Saturday 24 June 2006"
I mean, I may not stand out in a crowd, but this is just an unnecessary blow to my ego.
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Another issue is that your fingerprint must be stored somewhere else in a database. This leaves room for an attacker to use a digital copy of your fingerprint for other transactions.
Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but this is nowhere as safe as a private/public key. If the external party saved your public key, there is no worry. However, your fingerprint does not have two version, one being public, and one being private for signing. On the bright side, they can combine a pin number with the fingerprint, but the stores I have visited (Farm Fresh) do not require a PIN. Only a fingerprint.