Fingerprint The Same As Credit Card Theft?

By Ravi Das

You know what, today, I was going to start the same process for my daily writings as I always do. That is, look at the latest Press Releases, and decide what is important enough to report to my blog subscribers.

Once I pick a Press Release for the day, I then read it very thoroughly, and analyze the information from it.

As you have noticed, usually the first section is a summary of the Press Release, which is just usually the highlights. The second section usually contains my analysis of the Press Release.

Well, today I thought I would try something just a little different. I attend a lot of networking events here in the Chicago and surrounding areas to promote my newsletter, and other services.

A question I keep getting asked all the time: “What if my fingerprint is stolen”??? And in fact, I was just asked this question a number of times this morning.

Well, my usual answer is that yes, it is a form of ID Theft. But, put things in perspective. It’s not quite the same as Credit Card Theft. With a fingerprint, it’s not the actual fingerprint which is stored, just the mathematical representation of it.

So for instance, look at your fingerprint, and imagine a bunch of one’s and zeroes. That is what your fingerprint is to a Fingerprint Scanner, and what is stored. So, yes there is some possibility something bad could happen, but the chances are sort of remote.

Now look at your Credit Card. You will see the number, and if your card is stolen, yes, there is a lot of damage which can happen. At this point, after you discover your card is missing, hopefully you will contact your credit card company immediately.

So, the two are not exactly the same.

Well, in an attempt to further explore this topic, here is an editorial I wrote, specifically on this. It appears in one of the sample newsletters on my website, which is http://www.biometricnews.net/ .