The Payments World Really Wants To Know Who You Are (techcrunch.com)

jhigh writes: The generation that brought us the obsession with snapping photos of their faces, uploading to social media channels, and terming it "selfies" has unknowingly encouraged the launch a new cybersecurity platform for the world. You can sum it up thus: "pay with your face." Quoting: "Socure’s Social Biometrics Platform, which is already in use by financial institutions in more than 175 countries, provides analytics, assessing information about you from other public online sources, producing a social biometric profile, matching to your photo, and generating a score to determine the authenticity of your identity. ... Whether you have an established credit history or not, the one thing most of us have, especially millennials, is an online social platform presence. Biometrics data mining for payments security also reaches the unbanked crowd, those who have healthy online histories but might not necessarily use financial institutions or carry proper government-issued credentials." This is a fitting legacy for millennials, who impart knowledge one click at a time.

Comments

Biometrics is just silly

[Lennie]

It has been shown again and again biometrics don't really work:
- they can't be precise, because humans aren't solid objects. So they have to have pretty large tolerances which makes it easier for them to be fooled
- the most used biometric systems start failing when people get above 65, so it's just pure age discrimination
- when someone has a made a good enough copy of your biometric characteristics you can't easily replace your own

Why do people, or should I say companies and governments, keep trying to use it ?

Re:Biometrics is just silly

[Kardos]

Because the alternatives also have tolerances and can be defeated, and after risk managing it, it's cheaper

You're missing the point

[judoguy]

Most posts so far have obsessed on the "how" and ignored the "what".

People have commented on the pros and cons of bio metrics, etc. The real story here is the governments elimination of private transactions between individuals. To prevent crime, to beat the terrorists, for the CHILDREN!

Know your customer

The whole point is the furtherance of the totalitarian state. For our own good.

Naw, that's just crazy talk! Warrantless access to email, browser histories, no private financial transactions, phone metadata collection, etc., etc., etc. These things are needed for FREEDOM!! Next you'll be warning about concentration camps! That would NEVER happen in the U.S.!!!

Oh, this is as stupid as it gets.

[kuzb]

Yeah, please, can I have a payment system that sucks all my money out of the bank because someone got a picture of my face.

Re:Bizarre

[Sique]

Ah, the Facebook fallacy: "Because some people share some private information about themselves, it's totally o.k. that some powerful organisation is entitled to all private information of all of us."

No, just because my neighbor shared some vacation pictures of him and is family, no one is entitled to my vacation pictures. And just because I posted my curriculum vitae somewhere online, no one is entitled to all the dates and facts about my neighbor's life.

FAIL FAIL FAIL

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Whether you have an established credit history or not, the one thing most of us have, especially millennials, is an online social platform presence."

But some old duffers like me have virtually no "online social platform presence". No Facebook, no Linkedin, no Myspace, no Pinterest, no Instagram, no Twitter....I don't have any of that stuff. I'm happy that other people like those things, more power to them. It's just not my thing.

I realize that all that stuff is super popular and widely used, but I'm just not involved in any of it, the same way I'm not involved in model railroading or bowling or football. It's just not my thing.

If this becomes the way of the future then I suppose my near-perfect credit score and ability to buy stuff will soon wither away and I'll be left homeless, cold, and hungry, living in a cardboard box by the freeway.

As I cook my freshly-caught squirrel over a piece of burning tire, I'll berate myself, crying out, "If only I had made a Facebook account when I had the chance!!!"