RESEARCHERS from Japan’s National Institute of Informatics are warning consumers to stop flashing the peace sign in selfies, because it is possible for identity thieves to detect and capture finger prints from the image, which can be used to trick biometric sensors increasingly used to secure phones, PCs, financial services and apartment building door-locking systems.
Many of these photographs end up on the internet or on popular apps like Instagram. What an identity thief has to do is just find a photograph of you on the internet, analyze your finger prints visible in the peace sign, and then save your fingerprints with your face. With your likeness on record and a scan of your prints, they can then attempt to commit identity theft, researchers said.
They say that fingerprints can be read in the photographs taken 3m away from the subject, as long as the index finger and middle finger are clearly visible.
Identity theft is a huge and growing problem in the world. To date, the countermeasures that we’ve deployed – passwords, PINs, and authentication tokens – have been ineffective.
This has made biometric authentication a way of life. Biometrics rely not on something you have (a credit card) or something you know (a PIN), but something you are (your fingerprint, finger vein, palm vein or iris). Those unique biological identifiers are electronically read and converted to a binary file, a series of ones and zeros and sent to an authenticator. There, the information is compared with the string of numbers on file in the authenticator database.
If you lose your credit or ATM card, the issuing company can replace it. If your PIN becomes compromised, the bank can give you a new one. However, biometric information such as fingerprints cannot be changed over the course of a person’s lifetime. People have to know how to protect themselves. (Floro Mercene)