Passwords, as much ubiquitous as they currently are, will be a thing of the past and will be replaced by biometrics. Using smart devices – one of which is our mobile phone – we will authenticate ourselves to the website or app we are logging into.
Biometrics of certain body parts of every human ever are unique e.g. thumbprints and the same can be read by a device and matched with the data that was recorded while creating an account.
The same have been revealed in a Google discussion involving security experts.
Many mobile phones already have fingerprint scanner either at the back of the mobile or on the display and thus upgrading the software ecosystem to integrate these new features is not a far-fetched dream.
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And early adopters of technology will be all too excited to hop on board and help inspire usage by other users.
However, life as it is and deception being an inherent part of every species, there will always be exploitation. In the context of biometric authentication, like credit card details are exploited similarly biometric data is also open to same fate.
To illustrate, in India social security number called Aadhar is authenticated using biometrics. And Aadhar number is used for many critical purposes. What is stopping people from using a stolen image of your thumbprint and transferring your money to their account?
Passwords are pesky and most of us are lazy and apathetic enough to not use unique passwords and even when sites like ';--have i been pwned? or Firefox Monitor inform that our email address has been part of data breach and all our details have been dumped, along with millions of other people, in public domain most of us do not bother.
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So, authentication is a tricky thing to manage in the increasingly laidback society.