So the new iPhone has a fingerprint scanner.
Exactly how secure is that?
Anthony here for D News, and biometric fingerprint scanners
like the one in the iPhone aren't new.
They've been used in military and industrial security
for a long time.
You can get them on a lot of computers,
but it's still kind of a novelty on everyday devices.
Fingerprints are crazy things.
All these little ridges are super important to your sense
of touch, but they're also a really unique form
of identification.
Even identical twins don't have the same fingerprints,
because small differences in pressure in the womb
actually cause them to be different.
Which makes the idea of having a fingerprint scanner
on your phone a really nice one.
All your personal information protected
by the one type of identification you have that
can't be forged.
But here's the thing.
You could have the same fingerprint to someone else.
We just haven't come across a case of them matching yet.
It would be hard to run a completely scientific study
on whether it's true that fingerprints are unique,
because you would need every fingerprint from every person
in the world to be 100% sure.
But we can safely say that they are unique enough
to protect your selfies and your sexts.
A capacitive fingerprint scanner is
a sensor made of tons of tiny cells-- like,
smaller than the ridges on your fingertips tiny.
Which makes sense, because those sensors
use the flow of electricity to see where your fingerprints are
coming into contact with the sensor.
It's a lot like the touch screen on the iPhone
now, but much more sensitive.
Other fingerprint scanners are optical,
meaning they take a high resolution
photo of your fingerprint and compare it
to what they have on file.
Fingerprint scanners have to take a lot
into account-- smudging, dirt, all kinds of things
that might give a false positive or negative.
So they don't tend to try to match
every single piece of a fingerprint every time.
Once it stores your initial print,
the software in the scanner looks
for things like where specific ridges split into two,
or where your central swirl is.
It actually takes note of where all the distinguishing details
are in comparison to each other, and makes
a sort of map of landmarks on your fingerprint.
And then it looks for matches to those defining characteristics
every time you touch your finger to the scanner.
And depending on the level of security
needed for the situation it'll need more matches to unlock.
So can you fool the fingerprint scanner?
Yeah.
Optical scanners can get tricked sometimes
by a nice high resolution picture of a fingerprint.
A capacitive one like the iPhone's would
need a 3D mold of the fingerprint.
If someone stole your finger at the same time as your iPhone,
they could get into it no problem.
Not that I'm trying to give anyone any ideas.
Anyway, at really secure facilities,
the scanners can actually check to see
if the finger is still alive and attached to a body,
so there's that.
The combination of a fingerprint scanner and the ability
to make wireless payments is making a wallet and credit
cards and maybe even ID cards a thing of the past.
I love the idea of the simplicity,
but I lose and break phones too often to like that, I think.
Plus, the scary thing about all in one identification
is that when someone does manage to hack it,
it's much harder to prove identity theft
and get your stuff back.
So, 50-50 good to spooky ratio in my mind.
Let me know how you feel about it down below
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