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Put down the peace sign you selfie loving minx! Turns out it could be leaving you and your personal data at MAJOR risk.
New research from Japan’s National Institue of Informantics (NII) has proved that thieves can actually LIFT your fingerprints from a photo to access your biometrically protected data.
Summed up: they can access anything that requires your fingerprint AKA the iPhone Touch ID system.
The Japan Times reports that NII researcher Isao Echizen said that peace signs can be exploited with basically zero effort.
“Just by casually making a peace sign in front of a camera, fingerprints can become widely available,” he told the paper.
But don’t worry, apparently it’s not actually as easy as it sounds. The President of biometric verification company Vkansee, Jason Chaikin, told Mashable that it’s really a complex process.
For someone to hack your fingerprint from a photo they need the correct lighting in the snap, which only 30% of images typically have. Then they need to be able to resize it correctly and have the right program to transfer that image to an impression.
Realistically it’s not going to happen to you unless someone is SUPER committed to the hack, but it certainly has us all shook up! Think we’ll be resorting to the duck face for our selfies from now on. #RIP peace signs.
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