Selfies are a growing term in technology today. Selfies are popular to many smart phone users, you can snap a selfie to show what you are doing, where in the world you are and who you are with. So how much further can we go with our selfie pictures? The latest news has revealed that in the near future we will be able to checkout on Amazon by simply taking a selfie of ourselves instead of having to input a password. This could mean that this is the way forward and that selfies will be the new and more secure form of a password.
You may be thinking that this is not a secure way of checking out at Amazon as anyone could simply hold up a photo of the person on the account, however to avoid any fraudulent activity Amazon have created the two step rule:
1.) Step 1 will be to take a selfie of yourself.
2.) Step 2 will be to have another photo taken, yet this time you will have to form the facial expression Amazon are asking you to make such as a smile or blinking your eyes which will verify you are the owner of that account.
It has been proven that one in five of us will use the same password for everything. Over one in two of us will use a similar password with a small variety such as the same name followed by different numbers. Of course this will cause ease to that person as one password for everything means that you should never forget. However this poses a huge security risk for if someone was to find out what that particular password was they could hack into almost every account you have. With e-commerce sites such as Amazon, credit card details are stored onto your account, so for a hacker to checkout with just your password would be an extremely easy thing to do.
Mastercard have announced that selfies and fingerprints will take over all forms of passwords within 5 years time. This means that the smart phone will become an even bigger part of our lives as it will be our way of proving our identity.
Technology is already advancing in terms of security. Users of Android and Windows smart phones can unlock their phones by simply using the front camera to reveal themselves. Then with Android Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay you can pay using just your fingerprint.
Start practising your smile as you may be asked for selfies to identify yourself and checkout with many different e-commerce websites and apps in the not so distant future.
