Fingerprints point way forward for online passwords

The need to remember huge numbers of online passwords will be replaced by using fingerprints to unlock not just smartphones but also websites and services, according to a new report.

Paul Lee, head of technology, media and telecoms research at Deloitte, said that using fingerprints to access email, online banking, streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix, and newspaper subscriptions would help consumers overwhelmed by the number of passwords they have to remember.

“There is one forecast that people will have 200 online accounts by 2020. You cannot remember 200 different passwords so you will use the same one for everything. The fingerprint provides an alternative,” he said.

Companies that sell subscriptions could also start to use fingerprints rather than a password login to stop illegitimate sharing of accounts. “You can share a password but not a fingerprint,” said Mr Lee.

Deloitte said that while fingerprints had taken a long time to gain traction, the technology had taken off during the past three years.

Growing acceptance

The company interviewed 4,000 people and said that 31 per cent of 18-24 year olds were using the fingerprint scanners on their phones, compared with 8 per cent of those aged over 65. Deloitte predicts there will be one billion smartphones with fingerprint readers in use by the end of next year and that the technology will spread to cheaper models.

The first fingerprint reader was launched on a mobile phone almost a decade ago, when Toshiba adapted the identification function from its laptops to a little-remembered handset, the Portege G500.

Motorola tried again with the Atrix 4G in 2011 before Apple’s iPhone 5s pushed the technology into the mainstream when it incorporated Touch ID in 2013.

But the impact of the authentication technology was not immediate, despite the hype. Mr Lee, author of the Deloitte Mobile Consumer Survey, which will be issued next week, said that the issue for many users had been that fingerprint scanning was associated with criminality and "having your fingerprints taken".

But Deloitte calculates that, in the UK alone, the tips of our fingers are now read more than 100 billion times a year.

The company said, however, that the death knell of the password had not yet sounded, with its research showing that 63 per cent of the people it surveyed still relied on passwords and pin numbers to unlock their mobile phones, with a further 30 per cent not bothering to lock their phones at all.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016