I feel it is a good form of identifciation, but not authentication. That is why the police take fingerprints and airports use facial recognition. Biometrics are a good form factor to find those who don’t want to be found.

In order to make Biometrics useful, they need to be coupled with another form factor. The two most common are “something you know” and “something you have”. A PIN or a smartcard can help satisify these requirements. The positive is that both can be changed/replaced.

The idea of a Smartcard help further the situation because the “digital ID” can be stored on the smart card that you presumably have more control over. If it is stolen, you may have an idea well ahead of just your fingerprint being captured over a network.

But at the end of the day, the privacy concerns and the idea of who “owns” the data if you end the business relationship is what scares me the most.

Our privacy has been eroded quite enough, thank you.

I am against it because it means too much invasion of my privacy and I really don’t trust anyone to handle that type of information in order to access my money. I mean really, what if something happens, a glitch of sorts that would make me the guinea pug during their growing pains. I’m not up for it. What they need to do is start with some more common sense approaches such as increasing the security breaches we have now. There’s no reasons why identity thieves.

The reason is this: Biometrics is the reduction of my personally identifying body parts into a string of numbers. You and your computer may not be good at reproducing my retinas, but, heck, a 5-year old can reproduce a string of numbers. Never forget that digital computer systems ONLY understand numbers. And once that file containing millions of strings of numbers representing millions of retinas is compromised, then what? Retina laser surgery to change your password? No, thank you!

Information solely based on my physical characteristics are irrevocable. If I need to change my certificate of identity, I’ll have to add other (random) information, which brings us right back to remembering passwords and pass phrases.

I think biometrics sure beats some of the security measures in place now. I especially despise the “security questions” on websites. Your mom’s maiden name? Your elementary school? Your best friend? I can probably Google the answer for at least a few strangers.

I guess my concern would be whether the technology would work, all the time. The technology is more complicated than what is in place now. I bet there are a lot more false negatives (your biometrics fails to unlock security to your accounts) than there is now with PINs and whatnot. Might be a pain in the butt to get those errors fixed.