Passwords, as much ubiquitous as they currently are, will bea thing of the past and will be replaced by biometrics. Using smart devices –one of which is our mobile phone – we will authenticate ourselves to thewebsite or app we are logging into.
Biometrics of certain body parts of every human ever areunique e.g. thumbprints and the same can be read by a device and matched withthe data that was recorded while creating an account.
The same have been revealed in aGoogle discussion involving security experts.
Many mobile phones already have fingerprint scanner eitherat the back of the mobile or on the display and thus upgrading the software ecosystemto integrate these new features is not a far-fetched dream.
And early adopters of technology will be all too excited tohop on board and help inspire usage by other users.
However, life as it is and deception being an inherent partof every species, there will always be exploitation. In the context ofbiometric authentication, like credit card details are exploited similarlybiometric data is also open to same fate.
To illustrate, in India social security number called Aadharis authenticated using biometrics. And Aadhar number is used for many criticalpurposes. What is stopping people from using a stolen image of your thumbprint andtransferring your money to their account?
Passwords are pesky and most of us are lazy and apathetic enoughto not use unique passwords and even when sites like ';--have i been pwned? or Firefox Monitor inform that our emailaddress has been part of data breach and all our details have been dumped,along with millions of other people, in public domain most of us do not bother.
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So, authentication is a tricky thing to manage in theincreasingly laidback society.