Tech Companies Aim to Get Rid of Alphanumeric Passwords in the Near Future

As technology continuously becomes more advanced, and new innovations incorporate such technology, devices require more in-depth security measures. With the massive influx of "smart" devices, which collect a ton of personal information from their users, people find themselves forced to come up with new passwords all the time. Companies suggest that users choose different passwords for all of their different accounts, but an average user has dozens of different accounts, which makes having different passwords pretty infeasible. According to Hayley Tsukayama's L.A. Times article, that problem may be well on its way to being solved.

Several companies, but especially Microsoft Inc., have been pushing to get rid of passwords once and for all. While they do support the careful protection of online accounts from being targeted by cyber-criminals, research has found that passwords don't accomplish that goal well enough. Many people use the same password or some similar variation of it for all of their accounts because they simply can't remember dozens of different passwords. There is an inherent difficulty in choosing passwords that most would rather avoid: a password must be complex enough that a criminal can't easily figure it out, but should be simple enough that the user will be able to remember it easily.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all been making a push in recent years to rely on alternatives to passwords, such as biometric scans or temporary codes sent to the user's mobile device. Those alternatives make the accounts more secure, as a fingerprint scan is harder to hack than an alphanumeric password. At the same time, they make the process much simpler for the user and don't force the user to have to remember and type in a password every time they want to log in. Already, Apple and other smartphone companies have integrated facial recognition and fingerprint scanning in the unlock feature of their phones: a feature that many users love.

The main issue with changing up the security protocols, says Tsukayama, is that people don't like to adjust to a new routine. Even though having to remember a password all the time is annoying, many users (especially older users) are wary about using fingerprint scanning and other biometric markers to log into their accounts. They worry about sharing that kind of very personal information with a company that they don't necessarily trust to keep the data safe (both from criminals and from the criminal justice system). Getting users to make the switch will likely require slow changes, over a long period of time, to educate users while letting them acclimate to the changes.

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LAX to Allow Select Passengers to Check-in Using Fingerprints or Iris Scans

In this day and age, partly due to continually advancing technological innovation, the ability to avoid time-wasting activities like waiting in lines has become a necessity for many consumers. People value their free time and want to save as much of it as possible for activities they enjoy. For example, when people fly in an airplane, whether for their job or on their way to a vacation, they don't enjoy how long it takes to make their way through security and check-in lines. Fortunately for many, according to Hugo Martin's L.A. Times article, passengers leaving from Los Angeles International Airport may soon have the option to speed through check-in using iris scans and/or their fingerprints.

Depending on the type of flight and time of year, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours (or sometimes even more) for a passenger to get all the way through check-in and security before they are finally able to get to their boarding gate. For many people, especially the more affluent travelers and people who travel often for business, it can be worthwhile to pay a fee to get through security faster. Well, a company called Clear just installed new kiosks at LAX that allow passengers to use biometric markers to get through security. The service is membership based and costs $179 per year so it would be the best deal for frequent fliers.

Clear already has connections to 22 airports and 6 sports arenas around the country, so LAX is not their first foray into the world of biometrics. Accounts can be easily made at one of the kiosks by scanning a government-issued form of identification, answering some questions, and having one's iris and fingerprints scanned. After the short process to set up the account, check-in becomes faster and much more convenient. When using Clear to check-in, passengers get to interact with Clear employees (LAX has approximately 90 such individuals), bypassing most of the line and moving directly to the X-ray portion of security.

Clear may be one of the biggest presences in the field of biometric security, but other companies are beginning to get in on the industry, as it is likely to keep growing in the years to come. Jet Blue and Delta have begun using facial recognition and fingerprint scanning for the checking in of some of their premium passengers. Not only does scanning someone's fingerprints take much less time and is more convenient than classic methods, it can also be a more secure method. If biometric check-in were to become mainstream, wanted suspects would potentially be unable to get through security without raising an alarm, because their fingerprints and iris scans would be in the system.

However, that can also raise the question of privacy concerns. What will the companies do with all of that biometric information if this practice became mainstream? Would the police be able to get a subpoena for someone's fingerprint scans if they are a suspect in a crime? Many potential issues could arise from the integration of biometrics into security protocol, but many benefits are inherent as well. For now, it is only being used by a subset of passengers as a way to save time and make life more convenient. Everything else is too far in the future to know definitively now.

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