Some supermarkets now have fingerprint readers in lieu of credit card payments. You have to supply your fingerprint and attach your credit card to it, but then you can pay just by touching your finger to the reader.
There are many problems with this:
1) In theory, they’re promising only to take the “data points” not the fingerprint, but if they use the same data points as other companies, then the data points are the same as your fingerprint. If every company uses different data points, as data from each breach is combined, it create a better and better picture of your actual fingerprint.
2) Unlike a credit card that can be re-issued or changed, fingerprints can’t.
3) You don’t leave impressions of your credit card everywhere you touch like you do with your finger. Fingerprints can be used for tracking and accountability that you shouldn’t have to be responsible for unless you’re a criminal.
4) There was nothing wrong with the system that was there before. Swiping a credit card is actually easier and faster than putting your finger on a reader and entering a PIN.
5) The more people that use the system, the more problems they will have with false matches (where your finger and someone elses are too close to distinguish. Granted that the PIN solves this problem to a degree, but these companies will have to add more and more data points to the algorithm to make the system work. The more data points they use, the closer to storing your actual fingerprint.
This is bad, bad news. I wonder when the first “fingerprint data breach” will happen.
Tags:
Utter Failure
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