FINGERPRINT SCANS NEW KEY TO UNLOCK MOBILE PHONES

The pain of rustling up and remembering passwords will soon be a thing of the past following recent developments in online security and identification. Surveys show that an average person is required to recall at least 10 unique passwords and pin codes for workaday online logins and transactions.But this memory stress may soon get some relief. The latest iPhone 5S,has taken a swipe at it, making a big impression with a fingerprint reader called Touch ID. Introduced in a low-key manner during the launch of the new iPhones earlier this week (at the very end of the presentation) by Apple executives, the Touch ID fingerprint scanner will enable a quicker access to the users device while preventing unauthorized users from accessing a device's data, an increasingly frequent occurrence because of password breaches. The technology comes mainly from the $356 million acquisition Apple made in 2012 of the firm AuthenTec, which specialized in fingerprint scans, and which in turn had acquired firms such as EzValidation.

Apple isn’t the first phone make, much less tech company, to introduce fingerprint scanning on smartphones. Motorola did it in 2011,using the technology in its Atrix smartphone. In fact, Sony is credited with introducing the world’s first thumb drive with a fingerprint scanner as far back as 2003.But the technology was still in its infancy and reportedly threw up too many errors. Apple claims to have better technology. More importantly, it says the fingerprint data will be stored on the device and encrypted, and won’t be backed up to iCloud.

The development, involving major advances in biometrics, opens up a whole range of possibility .Scans will eventually be used not just to open smart phones and other devices, but also conduct other transactions. All it needs even with the occasional glitch is for the technology to acquire the critical mass it needs, which should come easily with the mass selling Apple smart phones.