Monday, July 10, 2017

Never use your fingerprint as a password

Hackers are targeting them:
Avanti Markets, a company whose self-service payment kiosks sit beside shelves of snacks and drinks in thousands of corporate breakrooms across America, has suffered of breach of its internal networks in which hackers were able to push malicious software out to those payment devices, the company has acknowledged. The breach may have jeopardized customer credit card accounts as well as biometric data, Avanti warned.
According to Tukwila, Wash.-based Avanti’s marketing literature, some 1.6 million customers use the company’s break room self-checkout devices — which allow customers to pay for drinks, snacks and other food items with a credit card, fingerprint scan or cash.
If the Bad Guys get your password, you can change it.  If they get your fingerprint, you're pretty well screwed.


My advice is to NEVER use your fingerprint to unlock ANY device.

1 comment:

  1. My cardiologist's office has a self check in kiosk terminal where you enter all your info. After you are finished you can stick your index finger in a scanner and it will save everything in their system so that you can just stick your finger in during subsequent visits without taking the time to reenter your info. No way will I do that. I'll spend the two or three minutes enter my info each time that I visit. Like Fox Mulder says, "Trust no one."

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