Alvida to Asterisks

Have you ever wondered, in your mind, how many passwords (which all looks same as set of asterisk characters when typed on screen) are stored??? I’m sure we all will be having enough user accounts which need a password. Don’t you find hard to memorize all your passwords? I do find very hard!

To avoid such hardness in memorizing password, few people keep all there passwords to one common phrase, so as no way of forgetting. But guys, it’s not secure. Suppose if that one secret phrase of yours is leaked, you lose all your accounts! So it’s best practise to keep different password for different account.

But now-a-days, I don’t know for others, but for me, several accounts are being opened & each needs a password protection. For example, each of Bank Account needs a valid & highly secured two passwords. Suppose 3 Bank accounts, then 6 passwords! Other than this, your gmail, facebook, twitter, yahoo, rediff, hotmail etc. OMG. So many! It’s not just remembering the password, but along with that, you have to remember the mapping of which password for which account! And wait, I forgot to mention about ATM pins for every bank account! Those are also kind of passwords which you are supposed to memorize. Don’t you think it’s too much to remember?

Let’s analyze why we need a password or why the concept of password comes into existence! Basically password is a way of authorizing yourself. Whenever entering into secured region, we have to authorize our self telling that we are WE :P. So people came up with something called, “password”, which should be a secret combination of letter’s, which only that person knows! Every time during authorizing himself, he should enter this so called “password” (which displays like asterisks). But hold on, what if somebody steals your combination of letters (password)??? It is like, stealing your identity with respect to that user account!

So I was sitting & wondering in my own thoughts like how easy it would be if we have some other kind of authentication where we shouldn’t remember anything! Then I thought of alternate way of authentication, which is “finger print swiping”. We all know that, every person’s finger print is unique, so why can’t we use this as password instead of “combination of letters”?

Just imagine, how simpler it would be! You just need to remember your login id. Password is nothing but your finger print (which I don’t suppose anybody should memorize :P). Even if you have long list of login ids, you can write it down somewhere (it is not secret)! Just enter your login id & swipe your finger! BINDASSSSS J

So now my thoughts on this get growing. I started to think, how to implement? So basically, I imagined like for every keyboard, along with keys there should be a finger print scanner which can be given as input! Instead of separate device, it is better to have it in keyboard only.
IMPACT – Keyboard manufacturers should agree & design accordingly.

Then all the web applications & the database have to be updated with the finger print password along with “normal password” (just in-case for backward compatibility).
IMPACT: All major companies, gmail, yahoo, rediff, facebook, your company, bank websites, ATM’s all should agree & develop web applications which accept finger print as password.

So there are several impacts & lot of brainstorming needs to be done (on my thought) so as to implement this in full fledge & remove the headache of “asterisk” every time you authenticate. But just imagine how beautiful it would be in near future, once this is implemented up. Just enter your user name & swipeJ. Nobody can hack!

In the mean while, there are few drawbacks too. For example, as you might have seen in movies, that clever hero will take a finger print of somebody on some glass & use that for authenticating (for eg: DON2). So the keyboard manufacturers should come up with an intelligent scanner, which has to sense whether the input is actual finger skin or dummy one! For example, how the touch screen mobiles identify the sense of human finger touch.

Another drawback may be for handicapped people! For this drawback, no worries, as our traditional asterisk password will be provided as alternate one along with finger print scanner.

Don’t you think, in near future, we will be having something like this instead of asterisk password? I certainly think so. Because, you might have already seen the transition of routine password to finger print scanner in latest laptops! So why can’t we guess, the same will be done for every password in web application, ATM’s etc?!!!

Now just imagine once my imaginary thought comes into reality, then finally we will be able to say “Alvida to Asterisks”!