Boffins take biometric logins to heart, literally: Cardiac radar IDs users to unlock their PCs The next form of biometric identification may be a heart scan. A group of computer scientists have proposed a system called Cardiac Scan, which uses a cheap and cheerful Doppler radar to wirelessly map out the dimensions of your beating heart. They say your old ticker's shape and pulsations are unique, and therefore useful for …
...and Login
How that is possible if you've heard that Wall Street is on the point of crashing and you want to sell...
OR you have arrived in the country and are being asked by immigration to login to your laptop...
Reminds me of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3A7B6qtUpU
(Showing my age, I know)
"Did their tests take monozygotic twins into account? "
They may have the same DNA, but they don't have the same fingerprints or vein patterns, so it's unlikely they'll have identical hearts. The pattern may be the same, but the assembly varies slightly, which is why even identical twins tend to have different personalities and interests.
Careful there. In professional or even private environments, someone coming over to see what's on your screen for whatever reason is very common. If the scanner can't cope with two hearts in the same vicinity, things will get ugly quickly. Not to mention that sometimes the helpdesk guy just has to sit in the chair and do stuff. I hope the scanner will be up to that as well.
And if it can, then the burglar doesn't care about the scanner - he can just tie the victim up, drag him to the PC and then do whatever he wants.
This tech may be fine to control access to physical areas, but I'm not convinced PC access is the right area to apply it.
Two hearts? That'll make life interesting for the pregnant. But it doesn't look like an intractable problem to me.
Could become a feature. Switch to Boss mode and the screen changes from your play to your work as soon as someone else is nearby. Find out if your boss has a heart.
Yep. All kinds of meds, from the performance-enhancing taken by anyone who goes in for high-level competitive sports[1] through to those taken by older folks thought to be at risk of a stroke or heart attack.
But there's also the plain ol' progression of the ticker through life. And personal events like getting fit, or vice versa. Useful bit of built-in obsolescence there ;) Some of us would insist on there being an override, like (say) the classic password on a post-it note.
[1] Of the kind that exercise the heart, so maybe not darts or snooker.
Sounds like an unacceptably high error rate. Perhaps best to stick to using it as a heart monitor, and find something more reliable for biometric login.
I've not done any research but I suspect that the pattern of veins etc in the rectum may be unique, so logging in securely requires nothing more complicated than sticking some sort of probe in to photograph it, and of course leave it inserted to prevent unauthorised access if the user wanders off.
One problem is that the veins and piles may well change over time, so a better option could be to look at vein patterns in the bladder. Just insert a fibreoptic camera via a catheter and you have the ultimate security system.
people's hearts do not change shape, unless they suffer from serious heart disease.
Or severe grief, or surgery, or even extreme happiness.
Atrial fibrillation occurs in 7% of the over 65s, which affects the heart beat.
I'm also not so keen on being unable to unlock my phone to call an ambulance if I've had a heart attack.
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