Fujitsu say they have done some research which, usefully for their bio-metrics product, says that one in three banking customers would like their banks to install bio-metric technologies in order to reduce phishing and online fraud.
A spokesman does seem to have spotted one of the problems with a palm-reading device to authenticate any ATM transactions: getting customers to come in and register their palms (the ones on their hands).
It’s really difficult to see the commercial value, to the banks, in deploying this technology. Only one in five recipients of a phishing e-mail actually responds to it, which means that the number of people at risk is quite small. You can download a (free) browser bar that will tell you if you’re on a known phishing site and people who haven’t bothered to do something as simple as that – and who are still falling for phishing e-mails – are hardly going to go to the trouble of getting their palms recorded, are they?
So, what about shoulder-surfing and ATM scams? Well, they’re not that difficult for even a semi-alert person to deal with. And it’s the alert people – the ones who would take precautions to make sure they weren’t scammed at the ATM – who are likely to take the trouble of getting their hands scanned. So, no real benefit for the banks there, then.
People go on eating junk food, they go on smoking, they go on drinking – all these things are potentially terminal f0r them, but they go on doing them. And if people will go on doing things that are fun but deadly, what says they’ll bother doing something that’s not much fun in order to avoid something that might also not be much fun? I could be wrong, but let’s watch how fast the hand-scanning idea catches on….
