Place finger here for potato chips.
By Colin Lecher Posted 02.22.2013 at 1:46 pm 11 Comments

Fingertip Detail
Fingertip Detail Frettie/Wikimedia Commons

These days, fingerprint scanners are used, but not very widely outside of Tom Cruise movies. But a small South Dakota college is doing a trial run of a scanner that has you swipe a finger to make a transaction.

The School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City has put the tech into two shops on campus. Purchasers type their birthday into a pad, swipe their finger in a machine, and get a receipt delivered by email. The scanner checks the buyer's unique print to identify him or her, and it also checks for living hemoglobin in the finger, preventing any unsavory characters from trying to use a severed digit.

The 2,400-student campus is filled with only mechanical engineering or hard science majors, which is why they were picked for the pilot program run by Hanscan Indentity Management and one of its subsidiaries, Nexus USA. About 50 students volunteered to try it out.

There are privacy issues involved with these scanners--you have to offer up your fingerprint before it can be identified as you--but it's a give and take. You give your fingerprint, and a thief, presumably, can't impersonate you as easily. Although once these get more widely used, it'll become more worthwhile for someone to figure out how to beat it.

[Huffington Post]

11 Comments

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Auroria
02/22/13 at 2:01 pm

Great idea and add a temperature sensor to ward off fingers being cut off a person to cheat the system.

If that finger isn't warm enough and the finger print doesn't match, no access.

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Greenmatrix
02/22/13 at 2:12 pm

This is not new. This is actually tested and used in many places around the world for many years now.

In 2007 for example a quarter of a million Germans were already shopping at the supermarket and paying with their finger scan.

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/witn/2007/11/071123_fingerprint.shtml

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vt007
02/22/13 at 2:23 pm

finger prints are easier to obtain than PIN codes...

---
No facts, No response...

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ppardee
02/22/13 at 2:43 pm

Auroria, All you need to do is keep the finger in your pocket.

There was also the dude who was able to fool the scanners using gelatin.

Also, my fingers are very frequently far below body temperature. Right now they're about 70 degrees, which is a lot colder than the severed finger in my pocket.

Could do the blood oxygen test thing... if it's below like 90%, you know its probably a dead (or very sick) person's finger, severed or not.

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Level13
02/22/13 at 4:12 pm

My fingers will buy happiness!!!

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Auroria
02/22/13 at 4:49 pm

So giving someone the finger will change to be a good thing, lol.

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kryo
02/22/13 at 4:58 pm

my old school's been using fingerprint scanners to allow kids to buy meals for years. I think there's even an option for parents to check what food their kids are buying

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FotoBum
02/22/13 at 7:29 pm

umm... ppardee, is that a finger in your pocket?? :)
(that deserves a high four)

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Xaotikdesigns
02/24/13 at 1:40 am

The wonderful thing about biometrics is that you don't have the option to change your password, even if someone happens to steal yours. Of course, if your password is stolen, you probably have more problems to worry about.

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supermoons
02/25/13 at 9:31 am

how about combining biometrics and pin codes

the scanner 'is' the enter button on the pin keypad so there is no difference to the user, no inconvenience.

If you steal a pin code, it's not going to work for you...

if you try, the police are automatically notified with a location/time and the fingerprint scan and identity if already in the database.

the owner of the pincode can easily still change it.

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Amun-Ra
02/25/13 at 10:25 am

supermoons,
So you suggest we use biometrics and a pin code.
A pin code is really just a password.

And if we are back to using passwords, then we have
come full circle, using the
password problem again.


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