Ears, the new biometric security system?

            Privacy and smartphones typically go hand in hand in today’s world. We have all heard of unlocking your phone through fingerprint, voice, facial recognition, password, or a combination of any of those. Well Yahoo labs is experimenting with their new authentication system Bodyprint, which allows users to unlock their phones using their ear. Sounds crazy doesn’t it. Basically the way this works is that Bodyprint “turns a smartphone’s capacitive touchscreen into a biometric scanner.” Because phones are becoming so much bigger and have a much higher resolution, they are actually able to accomplish it. Don’t worry if your thinking why the ear, Yahoo Labs is actually working on allowing other body parts to act as your key on your mobile device.

            Yahoo labs states that although, “fingerprint scanners are a convenient way to secure handsets…they are pricey and often limited to high-end handsets.” But while touchscreens sometimes lack the resolution to capture all aspects of a fingerprint, it is still able to capture larger outlines of bigger body parts. Bodyprint plans to utilize five different body parts for their security system, which include the ear, fist, phalanges (knuckles), palm, and fingers. According to their team, “our evaluation with 12 participants, Bodyprint classified body parts with 99.98 percent accuracy and identifies users with 99.52 percent accuracy, with a false rejection rate of 26.82 percent accuracy to prevent false positives.” When Bodyprint scanned the ear, they were able to achieve a 99.8 percent authentication precision and this is with a rejection rate of 1 out of 13.

            Apparently using the ear as a biometric scanner is not a new concept at all and the idea has been around for a while. Something surprising is that ears are basically like fingerprints and are all unique from person to person. Although the data is quite positive, Bodyprint is still in the development phase of their project to and will begin to test on a wider scale soon. So my question to you, if you had the choice to use an ear print or fingerprint, which one would you use.