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Google Plans To Bring Password-Free Logins To Android Apps By Year-End (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on TechCrunch: Google's plan to eliminate passwords in favor of systems that take into account a combination of signals -- like your typing patterns, your walking patterns, your current location, and more -- will be available to Android developers by year-end, assuming all goes well in testing this year. In an under-the-radar announcement Friday afternoon at the Google I/O developer conference, the head of Google's research unit ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) Daniel Kaufman offered a brief update regarding the status of Project Abacus, the name for a system that opts for biometrics over two-factor authentication. With Project Abacus, users would unlock devices or sign into applications based on a cumulative "Trust Score." This score would be calculated using a variety of factors, including your typing patterns, current location, speed and voice patterns, facial recognition, and other things.The Trust API will be available to developers, who can then implement that into their apps. The company says that developers will have the option to adjust the threshold required for a trust score.
In fact they will be extremely troublesome.
Typing or voice patterns? Oh so sorry, you have a headache or the flu, your pattern has shifted enough to not be recognizable. Walking patterns? Too bad about that broken leg after your ski trip, you're locked out of your phone for three months or more.
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So they want a technology that can accurately identify me by all sorts of unconscious traits. This would make any form of anonymity impossible.
I completely understand why Google wants this - collecting and selling information is their business model. I don't understand why *I* as a customer would want it.
Do not want. Courts can, and do, compel people to provide bio-metric data, as that is not protected by the 5th Amendment. Only passwords and pass-phrases are protected. Government agencies would LOVE this trend, especially if it became the only form of authentication on your device(s), as they wouldn't need a back door to your encryption anymore. Do not accept this weakening of your security.
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What problem is this trying to solve? And more importantly, why is google collecting this specific information about users and once collected, how else will it be used and by whom? Maybe that's why the announcement was "low key." They were hoping it would go unnoticed.