On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 14:12:22 +1300, Peter Reutemann wrote:
"Fingerprints aren't terribly secure; you leave them on almost everything you touch."
-- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/11/10/228223
There seems to be this perception that fingerprints either match or don’t match. That’s because their use started before the widespread development of 20th-century statistical techniques. In reality, they can only match more or less on a sliding scale of probabilities, just like DNA. I like Bruce Schneier’s summary: there are 3 kinds of authentication factors you can use. * Something you know (e.g. a password) * Something you have (a physical key, or a device like a YubiKey, or even your mobile phone) * Something you are (biometrics, including fingerprints, iris prints etc) Two-factor authentication is based on using two different kinds of factors together.