Branded at Birth

Definitive proof that fingerprints are a unique biometric at birth has been published by a team of academic researchers in the journal Cell. But while the paper seems to confirm that they are unique – are fingerprints immutable and reliable?

As part of a recent anecdotal community poll ¹, end users were asked, ‘what is your favourite biometric authentication option?’ The top two preferred responses, by far, were face recognition and fingerprint; however, this may simply be a reflection of your choice of smartphone.

In his article ‘Emerging Fingerprint Technologies for Smartphones’, (see IDN January 2023), Dr Alan Hodgson examined how improvements in sensors, particularly those used in under-screen smartphones, are driving the increased use of fingerprint readers as the first level of identity verification. The issue here for the ID and secure document community is not so much that fingerprint readers are incorporated into smartphones to validate the identity of a smartphone user, but that identity validation on a phone is increasingly being accepted as a proxy for proof of universal identity.