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Comment by eshyong | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure that's true. Anyone can claim to be "rrmm" but only one person has that set of fingerprints.

I certainly agree that a fingerprint is a much greater claim to an identity than a username. 'Casually' of course fingerprints work fine for auth, but fingerprints can and have been reproduced. Technology may alleviate that issue eventually, and you could argue that all auth methods have their issues.

The bigger issue I see is that 'rrmm' is an identity I assumed. I have many different identities. I only have one set of finger prints. (Fingerprinting to unlock a local store of keys would fix some of this problem, but I am fond of plausible deniablity in identification).

Fingerprints can be separated from their owner and fingers can be controlled by others. They are also duplicable, depending on the sophistication of the sensor.

"at a time", wasn't the movie "demolition man" showed us the physical danger of biometrics (/s)

No need for /s. That's a valid concern that gets mentioned often in discussions like this.

If a biometric sensor can be tricked by a body part that is no longer attached to the body, that's a serious issue. But AFAIK at least modern sensors try to verify if it's still alive and then there's also the biological effect that a body part quickly changes its properties if it is no longer supported by the body.

The biggest danger in that is probably criminals who don't know that it is likely that a detached body parts stops functioning.

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