The potential and pitfalls of biometric technology

Facial recognition is becoming a more prevalent form for companies to recognise their customers.

Live Nation Entertainment, the company behind the Ticketmaster brand, is developing a facial recognition system that they hope will replace gig tickets. The company has teamed up with Blink Identity, a company that builds face and iris biometric appliances, to develop tech which, it claims, can identify someone in less than a second as they walk past, by taking an image of their face and comparing it to a database.

HSBC tried to modernise its password access by creating voice ID recognition in 2017 in an attempt to counteract fraud. However a BBC investigation discovered the system could be tricked by twins. More recently HSBC have rolled out Face ID to 24 countries. 

Main concerns with facial recognition are to do with privacy and security. The question of who can access the databases that biometric companies create is an important one. Another is whether such recognition can be tricked, either by family members or people with similar facial features or even with photos.

The best answer would perhaps be to create multi layered authentication, but then this would defy the point of simplifying the whole process.

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