Mastercard wants to let you pay in stores just by smiling at a scanner, which is fun until you realize the privacy implications.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 CoolTechZone | 2024-06-29 15:00:01 |  553 Views |
Biometric authentication is NOT secure! Risks & solutions explained! [2024]
Biometrics is a convenient way to authenticate us. Barring serious bad luck, you always have your eyes, your face, your fingers—now your smile—with you and ready to deploy. Payment companies like biometrics because biometrics are individual enough to be functionally unique and difficult to counterfeit. We like them because it's much easier to pay with a finger than to dig out a card. But biometrics have such disastrous drawbacks that we shouldn't be using them like this at all.
"Another problem with biometrics: they don't fail well. Passwords can be changed, but if someone copies your thumbprint, you're out of luck: you can't update your thumb. Passwords can be backed up, but if you change your thumbprint by accident, you have stuck,” security legend Bruce Schneier writes on his personal blog.
Mastercard's Biometric Checkout Program is being tested in five supermarkets in São Paulo, Brazil. Users can register their face with the Payface service and then pay in stores by smiling at the authentication device.
