I don’t want to scare you or anything, but soon your laptop and mobile phone might start peering at your veins to make sure it’s really you who wants to send that e-mail or make that call. A biometric system called “Mofiria” has recently been developed by Sony smart guys, and it uses vein authentication technology to capture a finger vein image and store the data on your mobile devices, preventing unauthorized usage.
Apparently, we all have finger vein patterns that differ from person to person and even from finger to finger, and they do not change over the years. Experts say vein authentication provides higher accuracy for personal identification and produces faster reads than other forms of biometric authentication, such as fingerprint or retinal scans.
The Mofiria system uses a CMOS (Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor) sensor that diagonally captures scattered light inside the finger veins. A small, flexible design is being used to put this technology into mobile electronics, and Sony plans to make Mofiria available on its devices within the 2009 fiscal year.
Mofiria sounds like good news for everyone who wants to keep their devices and data secure but has a bad memory, since remembering to put your finger on a scanner sounds much easier than remembering your passwords, unless you’re using “password” for all of your passwords. —by Graham W.
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