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Not counting those who work for the CIA or FBI, any readers out there have to access their office spaces with one of these doohickeys pictured here? If so, drop a comment and let’s commiserate, because biometrics—at least for this blogger—ain’t all what it’s cracked up to be. Right?
When I first heard my office was implementing a fingerprint-activated, biometric badge, I was sort of excited in that way I sometimes get when Steve Jobs introduces a new product at Macworld, or when I load an often-frequented Web site and discover a totally new design (remember the day Yahoo’s new Beta Web-mail became available not too long ago? Sa-weeet!).
But like that Mercedes-Benz owner who got his finger chopped off by the Malaysian car thieves looking to get around the car’s biometric immobilizer, I now understand the drawbacks of such hi-tech security. And while I still have all my digits, there is a part of me that feels like I’ve lost something—namely, time.
That’s because while the technology is mostly there, it’s still not quite there, evident by the long queue of cars honking madly behind me in the mornings as I try again and again to position my thumb just right while accessing the parking lot card reader that raises the security gate.
I also need to activate the card when entering the elevator and often find myself shooting up to a higher floor than I intended as someone calls the elevator above me during the long interval I’m there fumbling with the device waiting for it to recognize my fingerprint and clear my floor for access.
The good news? If someone steals or duplicates the badge, they can’t access the building… unless, of course, I’m vacationing in Malaysia and… well, you can imagine the rest.
You know what else is a timesink? clicking through to each individual _floss blog post, now that your feed has switched from full to snippet. Why is that? I hate clicking through for each post that I want to read.
posted by Andrej on 7-16-2008 at 8:42 am
I worked for a education management company that had biometrics on all their stairwells and a few main floor office areas.
not everyone was given access, so it became coveted if your thumb let you take the stairs.
it was ok but annoying because if you opened the door without the metrics or you thought it had scanned then the alarm went off.
but you could never put your finger down fast and get through the door. it was a slow process.
posted by h.miller on 7-16-2008 at 8:50 am
I agree with Andrej. My general rule is no full feeds, no subscription. That’s what did in the Freakonomics blog, and many others.
It’s been fun, mental_floss.
posted by Eli on 7-16-2008 at 9:21 am
Great post. My wife has to scan her finger print at the tanning salon. I understand the CIA and FBI but the local tanning salon?
By the way, I like the website design very much and am glad for the switch. It’s similar to CNN.com or MSNBC.com and I appreciate the ease of use.
posted by J on 7-16-2008 at 9:41 am
Andrej, are you talking about how they have headlines at the top of the page now? You can still scroll down and get the same format the page always had.
posted by Tricia on 7-16-2008 at 9:45 am
We actually had biometric scanning at the university I attended. But it wasn’t fingerprints–it was hands. I think it had something to do with the precise SIZE of your hand, not the prints associated with it.
I had to swipe my ID then scan my hand to get into my dorm and get into the dining hall. It was just our way of life and only slightly inconvenient (never needed it for just an elevator or to get to class). Being college students, we turned it into a game. (The lower the number that came up after the scan was a better match, so it was a competition!)
posted by catherine ann on 7-16-2008 at 10:54 am
Tricia, no, I’m talking about what I see in Google Reader, my RSS reader. Now I only get the first few lines there.
posted by Augustin on 7-16-2008 at 10:59 am
When I was staying at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs (training camp, not related to the actual Olympics), we had handprint scanners for the dinning hall. They were more annoying than anything, and since we also had to swipe our id cards AND put in our 5-digit code, they added nothing to the security of our secret food.
posted by kp on 7-16-2008 at 12:01 pm
We all have them to log into our bloombergs. Never have any problems and they are smart enough to allow you to give temporary access to other users if you are on vacation. They are built right into the keyboard and protect other people from trading through your login.
posted by Sham on 7-16-2008 at 12:18 pm
I’m with Andrej, no more mental floss
posted by amanda on 7-16-2008 at 1:50 pm
Sham: What on EARTH are you doing reading this blog? SELL! SELL! SELL!
posted by David K. Israel on 7-16-2008 at 1:58 pm
my fiancee works in HR for a company that uses biometric readers on just about every door in the building. She hates them. She says that anyone over the age of 60 or so tends not to have viable fingerprints. Even better, when the system goes down, her office is the one and only place people can get to without a fingerprint so she has to entertain hordes of employees while waiting for the system to come back online.
posted by el dano on 7-16-2008 at 2:15 pm
A friend who is in security said the major problem, is that if your fingerprint (or the binary data representing your fingerprint) is ever stolen, you can’t change your password.
posted by Stew on 7-16-2008 at 2:18 pm
I work at a hotel where we use biometrics only to clock in and out. I thought it would be pretty cool to have to use it to get into certain areas, but I could see where problems and hassles would arise.
posted by Kolja on 7-16-2008 at 3:50 pm
Just in case any other disgruntled RSS readers wind up over here, here’s the explanation:
mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/16543
posted by Jason English on 7-16-2008 at 4:01 pm
My IBM computer has one and it bugs me that though I’ve programed all my fingers into it now, it still only wants to accept my right index finger -and sometimes it still doesn’t like that finger.
posted by Jill Harness on 7-16-2008 at 5:34 pm
It’s the NWO
posted by Friggin Becca on 7-16-2008 at 6:10 pm
MythBusters did a segment on fingerprint readers, they were super-easy to defeat.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 7-16-2008 at 11:15 pm