Israeli researcher teaches phones to recognise owners

AN ISRAELI researcher is working on teaching mobile phones to recognise their owners — and expects to eliminate the need for passwords.

Liron Ben Kimon of Ben Gurion University said her innovation would enable phones to identify users by monitoring how they the touch the screen, where they touch it and how much of their finger touches it.

Everyone handles their phone differently — and this gave her the idea. “We do the same thing over and over without even noticing,” she said. “If you give me your phone and I touch it, I be may be a millimetre to the right or left, and it won’t be the same.”

She is just 24, and came up with her idea during her master’s degree, staggering her supervisors. She was showcasing her research this week at CyberTech, the world’s second-largest digital innovations event, and while she does not yet have a fully-functioning application, she expressed confidence it would become reality.

Ms Ben Kimon said her identification method was more secure than passwords and fingerprints. “You can hack these authentications but it’s hard to steal someone else’s behaviour,” she said. Her research found that users could be identified in less than 14 seconds, or under 35 touches of the screen.