Prevent Identity Theft, Use Biometric Security

Biometrics is an encompassing term that can refer to mathematical and statistical methods applied to data analysis in biological sciences. It can also refer to security, where a person’s identity is identified using physiological and behavioral characteristics like fingerprint recognition, retinal scanning, or voice recognition.

Biometric security has two functions: identification and verification. Identification authenticates a user using the biometric characteristic without the use of cards, passwords, or other identifying factors. The captured biometric characteristic is compared to the all-available records in a database and the closest match is the individual. In verification, the user is authenticated with the use of a smart card, username, password, or a combination of username and password. The captured biometric characteristic is compared to the stored data registered to the individual for verification.

Security has become a very important issue for all, especially with the increased levels in crimes and criminal activities involving identity falsification. False identification and theft, such as false passports have been a big problem in most countries. A wide range of identity protection have been used in the past, but biometric security offers a more extensive range of secure identification and verification methods without the use of cards or keys, which can be stolen and used by others.

With biometric security, people can identify themselves more securely, using more unique identification through their eyes, faces, voices, and fingerprints.

In biometrics, fingerprint technology is by far the most developed, with a wide range of available products offering realistic high security solutions. It has also a high level of trust among users because of its simplicity, convenience, and trustworthiness.

Other biometric security applications use authentication technologies involving the iris and retina of the eyes, face, and hands.

Iris recognition technology is gaining popularity and runs second after fingerprint technology in identification. This technology uses the iris of the eye, analyzing more than 200 points found on it. Like a person’s fingerprints, irises are unique to their owner as there are no identical irises in the world.

Retina recognition system is another biometric security method using the retina of the eye. A light is used to scan the retina, allowing the examination of the blood vessel patterns found at the back of the eye.

Hand recognition, or geometric recognition, measures the physical aspects of a person’s hand, and evaluates it by measuring the size and shape of the hand. The measurement also includes the length of the person’s fingers, and other characteristics like creases, hedges, and scars. This biometric security method is quite common nowadays, but is not considered to be an accurate identification measure.

Facial recognition methods measure a person’s face through its overall structure including the distance between the eyes, the shape of the nose, or the distance between the nose and the mouth. This biometric method can easily verify a person’s identity, and a person being analyzed may be required to smile, wink, nod, or move their head from side to side to prevent cheating as when a face mold is being used to fool the system.