The first coins ever made were counterfeited after a while, checks were a good instrument until people learned to forge signatures, and credit cards started out simply as a card.
The magnetic stripe was added to credit cards to fight fraud. Next came holograms and then the three extra digits on the back of the card. The latest technology being touted is the use of biometrics. But, is it ready for prime time?
Every additional level of security works for a while. Part of the reason is that the security is a new thing and it takes a while for the limitations of that security to become common knowledge. Banks like the effect of asking people to put their thumb print on the back of checks; unfortunately, it is a good deterrent, but not much of a help in catching people who have committed fraud.
Recent tests of biometric technology demonstrate just how simple it can be to defeat it. T. Matsumoto, at Yokohama National University, used liquid gelatin from the grocery store to make a fake finger from a mold of a live finger. It took about $10 in materials to make something that could fool almost all of the fingerprint sensors he tried—not just once or twice, but 80% of the time.
In Germany, a finger print scanner was able to be bypassed by simply breathing on it. Others have found iris scanners and face scanners to be easy prey to fraud. In other words, the hype on how perfect biometric devices are is just that: hype.
Security can never rely on only one technology. The idea is to have something in the way that the potential fraudster did not prepare for and thus can not get around. Unfortunately, the current set of biometric security devices are so easily circumvented that the only thing going for them is ignorance. As soon as the ways to get around them are more widely known, the current devices will wind up being expensive door stops.
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