Are your veins going to replace your PIN at the ATM?

  • 16 May 2014
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Userlevel 7
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by Lee Munson on May 16, 2014
 
ATM access has traditionally been about you inserting your bank card and then entering your PIN - but that may be about to change.
Cash machines being rolled out in Poland are using a different form of identity verification developed by Japanese electronics company, Hitachi.
The new cash points, set to appear in 2,000 locations around the country, take a new approach to biometrics.
The infrared scanner on one of these new machines will literally get under your skin as it scans the veins inside your finger. The light from the scanner is partially absorbed by haemoglobin in the veins and returns a unique pattern which can then be matched to an existing profile.
 
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This seems like quite an advance in biometrics, I wonder how quickly and if they will make their way into other things where passwords etc. are needed.

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Userlevel 7
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I'm interested to see if this biometrics stuff ever takes off.  We now have fingerprint readers on the new iPhones, but I'm not sure that they are quite ready for prime time given the easily hackable nature of consumer readers.  Once you've captured someone's retina/fingerprint/veins/etc. then it seems pretty easy to reproduce those patterns in a way that will fool the devices.
Userlevel 7
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I agree Nic, I think it will be too easy to reproduce those patterns and they may not gain much ground because of that aspect, being able to scan the veins sounds more promising to me and they have a high success rate as well as things stand now.
Userlevel 7
I think it'll be the future of ATMs all around the world. Great to see it already taking off in Poland. It'll be way more convenient and secure.

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