Using Face Recognition Instead of a PIN Number

coondoggie writes "Face recognition as a unique biometric is growing slowly in certain corporate and consumer applications, but researchers at the University of Houston (UH) are trying to make the technology far more ubiquitous and secure: they want it to replace the dozens of personal identification numbers (PIN), passwords and credit card numbers everyone uses every day. University researchers developed the URxD face recognition software that uses a three-dimensional snapshot of a person's face to create a unique biometric identifier."

Comments

Check for life!

[reality-bytes]

I hope this system includes some method to check whether the rest of the person apart from the face is present.

Some poor Malaysian fellow has already lost a finger. I'd hate to have my head stolen just to access my bank account.

Its not the number of passwords that is the issue

[cliffski]

But the fact that every single one of them has different stupid restrictions. I try to limit myself to two common passwords where possible. one is fairly short, one is quite long.
Recently I needed a new password for a site. I tried the short one. "your password must be at least X characters". fine, whatever, that's why I use my long one,"your password is too long", so a new, made-up one "your password must contain at least one number". WTF?
Can we not at least agree some standard on this? Like many people I end up having to write this new mangled password down, totally defeating its security.
I do not see, from a code POV, why it matters that the password is less than X characters. Between 5 and 10 characters? WHY? what is wrong with between 5 and 50 characters? or 5 and 100 characters?
Most people can remember a sentence pretty easily, especially a favourite catchphrase or movie quote, remembering "tuesdaypass442" is not so easy, and thus they get written down. I understand the need for minimum pass lengths, but capping the max so low, and so close to the min, is just madness. Give us flexibility in passwords, not some dubious new expensive tech to do the same job.