jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
If I don't shave over the weekend will my computer know who I am Monday morning?
Shaving probably will not be a problem, but holding your head at a slightly different angle, or having slightly different lighting, or combing your hair differently will screw up the system totally, unless the system has radically improved since the last time I read up on it.
There are supposedly some new techniques that look at the infrared signature of your face (like, I guess, distribution & position of hot & cold spots), and that's less likely to be fooled by facial hair and other superficial disguises. It's probably a fairly simple technology, and could be applied to the credit card ID problem. Note that the mag strip encoding, which is clearly not very secure, could be replaced by one of the newer optical coding systems. Those would probably be somewhat harder to fake (you'd need to manufacture cards, and probably couldn't simple "re-record" over a stolen one.) An interesting question, to me, is what is the actual pattern of criminal activity involving stolen/fake credit cards? Is it a matter of huge criminal syndicates creating fake cards, or is it mostly crimes of opportunity where stolen cards are boldly presented by the thief (or by someone the thief sold the card to)? ______c_____________________________________________________________________ Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX * pain is inevitable m5@tivoli.com * m101@io.com * <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101> * suffering is optional