You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: Biometric Payment Solutions Growing In Popularity With Consumers

in #technology8 years ago (edited)

Fingerprints and other biometric data is a terrible idea for security and privacy. The cartoon above captures some of the problem. But another aspect to this is that biometric data isn't easily changed. If your password is leaked, as happens innumerable times because companies use poor security practices, at least users can change their password.
If this happens to your fingerprint or retina scan, it's much harder to change. People are also rarely aware that convenience often comes at a security and privacy cost. There is also no advantage in using biometric data to generate complexity in verification. Just because something is unique (e.g. fingerprint, retina scan) doesn't mean it's the best or only way of using complexity for verification.

You can check sites such as Have I Been Pwned? to see if a major data leak has affected accounts and passwords you use. Also, make sure to use strong passwords, not any of the innumerable weak ones hackers find it easy to guess.