Even your eyes can be ‘cloned’

TSB has announced plans to offer Europe’s first iris scanning technology to log into its mobile banking. However, in May, German hackers claimed to have cracked iris-recognition technology in Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 Smartphone. The Berlin-based Chaos Computer Club placed a high-resolution photograph of an iris behind a contact lens and held it up to the phone’s camera to gain entry. Dirk Engling, of the Chaos Computer Club, says: ‘The security risk to the user from iris recognition is even bigger than with finger prints, as we expose our irises a lot.’ Samsung insisted it would require an unlikely and ‘rare combination of circumstances’ to pull off such an attack, including possession of the person’s phone.

Other firms are looking into so-called ‘behavioural biometrics’. This includes monitoring how a user interacts with their laptop or smartphone device — everything from your mouse movements to the swiping gestures you make on a phone. Neil Costigan, chief executive of BehavioSec, a Swedishbased biometrics firm, says this offers ‘instant and continuous identity verification’.

Vein recognition technology was launched in Japanese banks several years ago and is now used at ATMs in countries including Poland. The technology allows customers to press their finger on to an infra-red reader, which recognises the vein pattern just below the surface of their skin.

Now, a firm called Sthaler has started a trial in a North London bar, where customers can pay for their drinks using a bar-top finger scanner. They hope supermarkets will follow with the technology.

Futurologist and the inventor of text messaging, Dr Ian Pearson, says: ‘Soon, people will complete a transaction just with a simple gesture and a few words.

‘Gesturing towards someone and saying “Here is £13.46” is enough to combine the voice and gesture recognition with the presence of your smartphone to be an electronic ID.’