Amazon’s rumored hand recognition payment tech might be useful beyond paying for produce at Whole Foods. Wall Street Journal sources say the company is developing hand-based checkout terminals that it would sell to “coffee shops, fast-food restaurants” and other stores that tend to have repeat customers, not just Whole Foods.
Continue reading Amazon may offer hand recognition payments to other stores
Prisons across the United States are reportedly building biometric databases that include voice recordings of incarcerated people, according to The Intercept. The report cites contracting documents for the state of New York’s prison system, as well as statements from officials in Texas, Florida, Arkansas and Arizona confirming that prisons are actively using voice recognition technology that can extract and digitize voices to create unique and identifiable biometric signatures known as voice prints.
Continue reading US prisons are reportedly creating ‘voice print’ databases
Fingerprint readers, like the TouchID on an iPhone, exist to make your device extra secure while keeping the process of unlocking it easy. Computer scientists at New York University and Michigan State are poised to turn that security benefit on its head. Like a master key that can open any lock, these researchers developed digital “master prints” that could emulate a variety of partial fingerprints enough to hypothetically hack into a device.
Passwords are a pain in the ass. They’re either easy to crack or hard to remember, and when breaches occur you have to come up with a whole new one. So people are trying to do away with passwords altogether, and so far fingerprint scanners are doing the job nicely.
Continue reading Our fingerprints, eyes and faces will replace passwords
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