bigguy

Hey I'm a bit of a thinker, somtimes my ideas are ok and sometimes not. But I was thinking about a way you could stop identity theft and i got to thinking. Since all the credit card processing machines are connected to a phone line to verify it, what if there was a thing where when issued your card it took a picture of your face, or your pupil, or even your fingerprint. Then that information is stored in a database, and when you try to buy soemthign at the store you are required to look at a camera, and it detects if your face matches certain areas of the picture taken when you was issued the card, or it loks at your pupil and compares them, or even you fingerprint. I'm sure there a coupel ways it could be misused that I havent thought about. But what do yall think about it. Do you think it would work? Or would it be to much trouble. I dont think any of the ways today that say can prevent identity theft actually work, without you paying something like that Lifelock company. I think it works pretty well, but don't you have to pay and there really is always a chance that somethign will get through. But with this face detection,m or pupil comparision, or fingerprint scanner. I cant think of way it could be fooled. Just curious as to what yall think, this idea probably wont go any further then this forum, but it never hurts to ask. Thanks

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lectricpharaoh

Some companies are researching, testing, and/or advocating the use of biometrics for stuff like credit and identification cards. I fully expect technology like this to become commonplace in the foreseeable future.

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DaWei

Reduce something to practice so that you can patent this original though and get filthy rich.

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Jabo

What about corporate and shared credit cards? Or giving your plumber your credit card to pick up supplies. I worked for my old boss at his house and it was nothing for him to give me his credit card to go get supplies. What about online transactions? What about a lot of things where biometrics doesn't actually pertain?

And who's to say somebody can't scan your face/pupil/fingerprint and come up with a hologram or some kind of print that will fool biometrics. The more sophisticated things get, the easier it is to jack Joe Blow and get rich.

Hey, I know, we could do voice recognition, so that all you had to do was record somebody and take all their money. Or maybe for every citizen, we could have a government employee that goes everywhere with the citizen and approves all transactions. Or may we could change our monetary system to rocks. If everybody had to pay with rocks, how much theft would there be? How many rich people would there be?

bigguy

I'd be a billionaire I got about 40 acres of prime rock. It's the good stuff to. But when you said online transactions and thing, more and more computers are coming out with fingerprint scanners, so it wouldnt be that hard do it with online transactions. As for giving your card to a plumber or someone. I'm sure there could be a way to let whatever store he is going to know he has your card, and thats isnt really theft since you gave it to him. Here is what you could do.
Call the company as soon as your have seen your card is missing. They will put your account on alert and it will change the database to stolen. so when someone tries to buy something with your card it will tell the store owner that this card has been reported stolen, and the person with the card needs to scan their fingerprint or face detection or whatever way this is implemented to compare it to the original one that was taken when you was issued the card. The hologram thing, I don't know much about holograms, but wouldnt you have to take something out and put it in front of your finger or your face, so it could compare. I'm no genius but I'm sure that store owners out there would get supicious when someone whips out a photo and scans it instead of their face.

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peace_of_mind

It just sounds a little too Big Brother-esque to me BigGuy.

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Jabo

Exactly, and where's the security in that when the scanner is in somebody's living room?

So, the only time they should use these devices is if the card is reported stolen? That's a bit counter-productive

Not being critical I hope, but necessity is the mother of invention. There are scams where people hack ATMs with their own implementation of the user interface, and it reads the card as it goes in the slot, and also they put a little camera there to record the keypad transaction. And, it's fooled a lot of people. If it makes people money, they will figure out a way to do it.

Motto of the X-generation: money for nothing and your chicks for free

bigguy

How would there not be security with the scanner in your living room? I'm sure most people don't leave their credit laying out, so how is that not a good thing? I know there are a lot of things that need figured out, and I don't claim to have all the answers, but everything that started out as an idea had things that people worried about. But the devices could be used only when it's reported stolen, I didn't say they had to be. I would use them every time, a card is used. But like I said I dont know, i was just thinking and I think someday it will be a big market in stopping identity theft.

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Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it. - Mark Twain

Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation.

Jimbo

Big-brother++

Also, there's still problems with biometrics, especially fingerprints

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Arevos

The problem with biometrics is that it's very difficult to alter them when they are compromised.

As far as I can tell, there are two problems inherent with modern identity authentication:

1. Modern OSs are difficult to secure, partly because the security model is invariably too coarse-grained and primitive to guarantee security with your average user at the helm. It's also difficult for the general public to accurately gauge the effectiveness of an OS's security. Because of this inherent insecurity in our computer networks, it's difficult to guarantee that the cryptographic keys associated with an identity are secure.

2. There is, as yet, no secure method to conveniently pass authentication details between a human and a machine. PINs can be seen or intercepted, credit cards can be cloned, and even biometics, such as fingerprints, can be picked off. Mythbusters had an episode where they rather successfully managed to circumvent a fingerprint lock with only a photocopy.