If you’re as plugged in as we are, then you probably have something like 150 online accounts. That means you probably have 150 variations of the same half-dozen login names and passwords. And chances are, you’ve gotten a message from a friend in the last few months telling you that it looks like you got hacked again, after he received email spam to enlarge an embarrassingly small body part. Well, we think the days of the alphanumeric password are numbered. The age of biometric authentication is dawning.
…We didn’t realize the rabbit hole that we were jumping down when we first started researching this topic, so we thought we’d give you a taste of some of these biometric authentication systems by highlighting a few startups and companies…
…Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ear … for biometric authentication. Our apologies to Shakespeare, but we challenge the Bard to find a more interesting use of that line. Descartes Biometrics, based in Bellingham, Washington, uses a smartphone’s front-facing camera and a person’s unique ear features for authentication. The user simply lifts the mobile device to her ear—apparently this is what people used to do with phones—and the mobile app scans, analyzes and matches the shape of the individual’s ear. Apparently, one well-known critic, a fellow known as van Gogh, was not overly impressed.