During this year’s IDF event in San Francisco, California, Intel has just demonstrated its Palm Secure concept that allows the user to identify itself using a single method of secure access, his own hand. The company has a special video sensor that will film and identify your palm.
The technology makes sense if you stop and wonder just how much time you spend every day typing your username and password to log in to Yahoo Mail, Skype, Amazon, Steam, Facebook, your bank etc.
The main problem is privacy and there aren’t too many tech savvy users that will give their palm imprint away too easily.
It’s quite strange how companies research human identification methods that are directly dependent on our physical presence.
Forcing the user to scan his hand or his fingerprint means that if he injures his body he won’t be able to use the technology anymore.
On the other hand, this leaves open the possibility that an outlaw might actually chop off a finger or a hand if getting access is important enough and thus rendering the whole thing useless.
Such an approach actually gives an incentive for such type of criminality as nobody could crack somebody’s head open to find out a password, but chopping off a limb is not out of the realm of possibility.
Even so, there are many other technologies that can be used a whole lot more secure, especially for a user in his own home or office.
A good example of a non-invasive technology is voice recognition, where the user recites a few words that allow access only if the right voice is saying them.
Intel is also working hard on voice recognition as we reported here, but the company doesn’t seem to care to use it for security applications.
The problem of the annual cold also arises here and makes you wonder what to do when you lose your voice for a few days in winter, but there won’t be anybody stealing your voice.
Despite all the technological advances, one can’t help but wonder why all the corporations are so eager to tag each and every one of us when the technology behind such an initiative always rises many other problems and concerns.
Leaving behind passwords and only using biometric identification is not practical in all situations as you actually may want to give somebody else your password so that the respective person will help you with something that you’re not able to do as you’re not in front of the terminal.
It’s simple to send or tell somebody your password and then later change it, but there’s no clear way to send your biometrics.
Intel’s hand scanner is
reportedly quite bulky now, but we’re willing to let this one slide as this is only a prototype.
On the other hand, we wonder why simple fingerprint scanning isn’t enough anymore.
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