Pakistani Mobile Users Have 10 Days To Register Their Fingerprints Or Lose Their Connection (Inquisitr)
To counter the growing menace of terrorism, the Pakistan government has ordered all mobile service companies to acquire fingerprint scans of their subscribers before April 15. Subscribers failing to do so will get their mobile subscription terminated.
Biometrics for mobile devices have finally reached a tipping point. The march began with the release of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and later the iPad, each subsequently matched by Android competitors. These smartphones and tablets finally have enough processing power and hardware capabilities to put biometrics directly into their users’ hands. Biometrics, whether for mobile devices or large stationary systems, typically perform one of two functions: authentication, proving that someone is who they claim to be, or identification, figuring out who someone is. Nearly all consumer-facing use cases are authentication and nearly all identification uses are enterprise-facing, especially government use cases. Somewhere in the middle, financial institutions are offering their users the chance to authenticate to online banking systems with their voices or with their eyes, in place of keying a personal identification number (PIN).
Huawei Ascend P8 leaks point to integrated fingerprint scanner (Trusted Reviews)
Although we can’t say fir certain that the P8 will play host to a fingerprint scanner, the large rectangular cut-out on the phone’s rear looks markedly similar to the fingerprint reader on the oversized Huawei Ascend Mate 7.
Huawei’s customer-facing products have really come on strong in the last few years.
Alipay to Use Facial Recognition Biometrics (Find Biometrics)
The announcement came by way of Jack Ma, the CEO of Alipay’s parent company Alibaba, who provided a few details in a speech at the Cebit trade fair in Germany.
Ma explained the development as a solution to the difficulties associated with online paymetns, which he called “a big headache,” adding, “You forget your password, you worry about your security.” He went on to say that in its facial recognition system, Alipay will offer users “a new technology.”
Yahoo Mail Now Accessible Without Password (Latinos Post)
“You log into your Yahoo account using your normal passwords. In the security settings, you turn on on-demand passwords and register your phone. Next time you try to login, the password field is replaced by a button that says ‘send my password,’ and the company texts a four-character password to your phone.”
There are, however, critics of this approach. See Yahoo’s attempt to kill off passwords raises security concerns at Computer Weekly.
Is the UK banking sector ready to sideline passwords? (Information Age)
RBS and NatWest have been the first banks to announce that they are soon to allow customers to access accounts on their smartphones using fingerprint recognition technology.
The move is a seminal one for UK financial institutions, and an indication that the era of passwords may be finally drawing to a close.
Also:
Fingerprint authentication protects youngsters from themselves (Computer Weekly)
Both the Royal Bank of Scotland and MasterCard have recently made announcements regarding fingerprint authentication services and, if research from Visa Europe is anything to go by, the technology could be the best way to help users keep their bank details secure.
The research revealed those aged between 16 and 24-years-old are very liberal with personal details.
For example, 34% of this age group have shared their debit or credit card pin numbers with someone, compared with 23% for all age groups. Some 32% have shared their smartphone password and 20% have shared internet banking passwords.
Your Arizona Driver’s License Could Be Stored Someday on Your Smartphone (Phoenix New Times)
Delaware aims to be 1st with digital driver’s licenses (USA Today)
So, which will it be? Or, will some other state beat them both?
It’s Apple’s fault that the Nexus 6 doesn’t have a fingerprint sensor (The Verge)
Former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has confessed that the dimple at the back of the Nexus 6 was originally intended to play host to a fingerprint sensor. Back in 2011, Motorola was a pioneer in bringing fingerprint recognition to its Atrix 4G smartphone, however the company it used then, Authentec, was purchased by Apple a year later for a price of $356 million. Authentec were, in Woodside’s judgment, the best supplier around and “the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet.”
Samsung to ape Apple’s Touch ID with touch-style fingerprint sensor in ‘Galaxy S6’ – report (Apple Insider)
Samsung’s next flagship smartphone will ship with a Touch ID-like fingerprint sensor in place of the swipe-style sensor that the company employed on the underwhelming Galaxy S5, according to a new report.
Good move. The “swipe readers” can be a bit trickier to use.
In Your Face: USAA Brings Biometric Logon to Mobile Users
“This will make USAA the first U.S. financial institution to offer facial and voice recognition on a mobile app as added protection against fraud and identity theft,” the company announced.
So how does it work? USAA’s facial recognition requires users to look at the screen and, when prompted, blink their eyes. For voice recognition, users must read a short phrase.
First impressions: Saygus V2, the phone with 320GB storage (Times of India)
The right edge of the phone sports all hardware buttons(volume rocker, power and camera shutter) and a fingerprint sensor as well as a 60GHz mobile beaming transmitter.
The fingerprint reader appears to be one of the models where the user slides their finger across the sensor. The linked piece has a lot of photos and a review.
In 2011, we observed that:
Mobile hardware is a tricky business. There is a tension between the market signals coming from the “make ’em cheaper” vs the “make ’em more secure” crowds.
It looks like that is set to change in a big way…
BYOD Security to Improve With Mobile Device Biometrics
IHS technology supports that claim and reports that mobile companies will drive that growth through the use of fingerprint sensors, a market that could be valued at $1.7 billion by 2020. “Fingerprint sensors have arrived in force and we are forecasting that shipments of fingerprint enabled handsets and tablets will reach 1.4 billion units by 2020,” Marwan Boustany, senior analyst at IHS Technology, told the publication.
As with many things in the technology world — domestic air travel, vehicle air bags, mobile phones, etc. — mobile biometric hardware started out with high cost and limited appeal. If International Data Corporation (IDC) is correct in its assessment, mobile biometrics could take a similar path to ubiquity.
Biometrics: the future of payments (New Zealand Herald)
“The adoption of biometrics is on an exponential curve and is largely as a result of the financial services and payments industry,” said Dunstone.
The core uses of biometric data to date have been largely confined to government agencies such as passports and visa application processing as well as in policing but the technology is now starting to be adopted in consumer level devices.
Mobile users safer with biometric security: Report (Planet Biometrics)
A new mobile security report published by Javelin Strategy & Research and Nok Nok Labs has found that mobile users are putting themselves at risk of fraud with flawed password strategies, and that users often prefer fingerprint authentication.
NYPD Equips Officers With Biometric Smartphones (Government Technology)
New York Police Department officers and vehicles are to be outfitted with new technology as part of a $160 million program that will lead to fewer arrests and more summonses after being fully implemented next year, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Oct. 23.
All 35,000 NYPD officers will be equipped with smartphones that allow officers to search databases, view wanted posters and scan suspects’ fingerprints.
Why biometrics will be the key to mobile payments adoption (Bank Systems & Technology)
Until making a mobile payment becomes faster than using a credit card, mobile payments will be stuck in low gear. And the key to making mobile payments fast is to use biometrics to solve the authentication problem and eliminate the need for consumers to enter a password.
International Data Corporation (IDC) Analyst: Banks should precede with caution (IDC)
“While improving authorization experience is attractive and will help adoption of mobile banking services, financial institutions should not just blindly commit to mass market biometric identification solutions, especially those provided by third parties via publicly-available APIs”, says Andrei Charniauski, Research Manager at IDC Financial Insights.
Samsung Integrates Fingerprint Technology on Smartwatches (Payment Week)
Samsung Electronics has teamed up with e-commerce company PayPal and human interface solutions provider Synaptics to integrate mobile payment fingerprint-identification technology on its smartwatches.
Many reasons to use biometrics to secure mobile payments (Payments Source)
Much is being researched and written on the subjects of mobile payment security and the use of biometrics as a replacement to traditional user names and passwords. As more mobile devices that contain our identification and personal information hit the market, the securing of these devices to recognize and authenticate their rightful owners will likely determine who succeeds and those who fail.
Author Mike Goldgof is the Vice President of Marketing at AGNITiO.
Mastercard voice and face recognition acheives 98% success rate (Computer Weekly)
The payment card company created a mobile app to test voice and facial recognition technologies on more than 14,000 transactions.
Mastercard employees around the world carried out the tests on Android and iOS operating systems. The process took less than 10 seconds for most transactions.
We discussed why face and voice biometrics were likely to be strong candidates for mobile biometrics here in 2012.