> Don't expect biometrics to be all-it-takes. A real-life > example. A bank > had a dactiloscopic scanner to authenticate users of rented > private vault > cells. A woman came to rent a cell, but they simply could not > establish an > account for her because she was a typist and her fingertips > were so soft > and papillar pattern was so blurry (very thin skin) that > scanner simply > could not identify her. Sounds like a very poor quality reader. It only takes 12 minutiae points to positively identify someone beyond any shadow of doubt. The most common problems regarding fingerprint recognition are placement on the reader (Not enough minutiae readable or using the thumb instead of forefinger) and overly dry fingers (Most common in the elderly). > Also, marketoids of biometric systems tend not to tell you > one really important thing: you should not assume that a part of human > body used for auth will always remain and always be the same. A person can > loose a finger in a disaster, ditto an eye. Skin tends to change fast, > especially fingertips, voices change, even adults' voices. That's why most Biometric vendors recommend the enrollment of more than one finger. In case of damage, band-aid, etc. Granted, the metrics and rate of change will vary from person to person (If their is any deviation over time fact) but normally not enough to effect fingerprint reads if a good enrollement was established as recommended in the first place. And if you lose all ten of your fingers, fingerprint authentication won't do you any good anyway. > Provided that biometric scanners and recognition software > still cost a fortune, and they still have to be backed up by traditional > auth methods, real advantage of biometrics is still questionable. Not neccesarily true. You can get a good quality FP reader (with software) for under $100. That's one of the myths regarding biometrics. Another common myth is that the whole fingerprint image is captured and stored. Best Regards, Ken
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jun 28 2001 - 09:28:54 PDT