Millions of Voiceprints Quietly Being Harvested

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The Guardian: Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords. "We sometimes call it the invisible biometric," said Mike Goldgof, an executive at Madrid-based AGNITiO, one of about 10 leading companies in the field. Those companies have helped enter more than 65M voiceprints into corporate and government databases, according to Associated Press interviews with dozens of industry representatives and records requests in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. ... The single largest implementation identified by the AP is in Turkey, where the mobile phone company Turkcell has taken the voice biometric data of some 10 million customers using technology provided by market leader Nuance Communications Inc. But government agencies are catching up.

Comments

Over the phone?

[TubeSteak]

The Vanguard Group Inc, a Pennsylvania-based mutual fund manager, is among the technologyâ(TM)s many financial users. Tens of thousands of customers log in to their accounts by speaking the phrase: âoeAt Vanguard, my voice is my passwordâ into the phone.

The problem with biometrics is that you can't ever replace them if they are stolen.

So naturally they want to use a password that you have to announce publicly. :facepalm: