PayPal gets personal with stomach and brain password implants
PayPal is seeking to new ways to minimise the password burden on its users by pioneering innovative ‘natural body identification systems’ which eschew strings of alpha-numeric characters in favour of the gastro intestinal tract.
The biometric system would necessitate the security conscious embedding, injecting or ingesting a range of skin grafts, potions and pills designed to create an indelible marker of the individuals unique bio-rhythm by charting heartbeat, glucose levels and even the pattern of veins.
Jonathan LeBlanc, PayPal’s global head of developer evangelism, prophesised: “As long as passwords remain the standard methods for identifying your users on the web, people will still continue to use 'letmein' or 'password123' for their secure login, and will continue to be shocked when their accounts become compromised.
“I can’t speculate as to what PayPal will do in the future, but we’re looking at new techniques – we do have fingerprint scanning that is being worked on right now – so we’re definitely looking at the identity field.”
A PayPal spokesperson denied any immediate moves to introduce the unconventional techniques however, stating: "We have no plans to develop injectable or edible verification systems.
"It's clear that passwords as we know them will evolve and we aim to be at the forefront of those developments. We were a founding member of the FIDO alliance, and the first to implement fingerprint payments with Samsung. New PayPal-driven innovations such as one touch payments make it even easier to remove the friction from shopping. We’re always innovating to make life easier and payments safer for our customers no matter what device or operating system they are using.”
The innovation drive seeks to overcome fallibilities in current generation tech such as fingerprint scanners and location verification, which aren’t fool proof. It will also negate the propensity of individuals to fall back on easily guessed passwords such as ‘123456’ or ‘qwerty’ for their personal log-in’s.