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Our fingerprints, eyes and faces will replace passwords
Passwords are a pain in the ass. They're either easy to crack or hard to remember, and when breaches occur you have to come up with a whole new one. So people are trying to do away with passwords altogether, and so far, fingerprint scanners are doing the job nicely.
Mastercard's 'selfie pay' comes to Europe
Have you dreamt of a world where everyone verifies their online purchases with a selfie? Me neither, but apparently that's a future Mastercard believes in. The company's "Identity Check Mobile," better known as selfie pay, is rolling out now in the following European markets: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It follows trials in the US, Canada and the Netherlands, which have presumably gone down a storm -- Mastercard says the technology will be available "across the globe" starting next year.
MasterCard's selfie security: What could possibly go wrong?
When I read about MasterCard's plan to do selfie security with purchases, I wondered what the first massive breach of biometric data is going to look like. Unlike passwords, biometrics such as face mapping, fingerprints and iris scans can't be changed when a database gets popped. Worse, data sold to marketers or snarfed into an authoritarian database isn't revokable. Manny the cat would not approve. Fortunately, MasterCard isn't going to be replacing the password or pin with selfies, but instead wants to make its "Selfie Pay" app part of a two-step security routine when purchases are made or money is withdrawn. MasterCard says users will be required to blink for the app to demonstrate it's a live image. The company plans to roll it out in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and a few European countries by this summer.
