IBM ThinkPads Get Thumbprint Scanner

IBM ThinkPads Get Biometric Access Tech
October 5, 2004
By Enterprise IT Planet Staff



IBM hopes to ease the minds of roving execs by adding yet another layer of security to its ThinkPad notebooks.

Mirroring Microsoft's "biometrics for the desktop" move, IBM has added fingerprint readers to its line of distinctively black business-class notebooks. The feature becomes available on October 19 on certain ThinkPad T42 models.

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Would you let yourself be "scanned" as proof of ID? Even if it is your own laptop, what's to prevent someone hacking into your computer via internet or wifi, and stealing your "fingerprint".

The thing that worries me about this is the behind the scenes development of Internet2, which will be completely government controlled. One of the "features" of Internet2 is complete identity tracking through biometric log on procedures.

I probably should have posted this in the NWO threads, as I feel this has more to do with internet surveillance than computer security. I think it's also conditioning us to accept thumbprint scans and biometric ID technology as part of every day life.

[edit on 10/5/04 by bunkbuster]

This may be new for IBM, but this technology is being used for 1 or 2 years.

Also, apparently, in some systems, if you do not clean the surface after putting your finger in it, the fingerprint stays there, and if someone breathes on the surface, the reappearing fingerprint may be enough to be recognised as the real finger.

Originally posted by ArMaP
if someone breathes on the surface, the reappearing fingerprint may be enough to be recognised as the real finger.

This brings a whole new meaning to the words "identity theft".

I'd rather just use a password. Right now i don't have that much to hide. But yeah someone could steal someones identity easily wiht this is more things used fingerprints.

ArMap
This may be new for IBM, but this technology is being used for 1 or 2 years.

Yes its been around but it always been an external hardware, now its built it, I think the next step for security will be Iris scanners. Since your eye doesn't touch nothing so its impossible to "steal" it, I know that some people eyes are close to other peoples but all eyes are at least a little different so hopefully they make there scanner software sensitive but not to sensitive that it doesn't let you into your own computer if you have a eye lash in your eye.

As far as I could find, the first notebook to have such a device was the TravelMate 739TLV, in the first half of 2001, so you see this is nothing new.

Yes, Murcielago, the iris scanners are much better.

First, there are less chances of finding one eye that looks like another than finding a fingerprint like another.
Iris scanners also can see if what they are looking at is a photograph of an eye or a real eye, because they can see if the eye is a live or a dead one.

I have just been reading the latest PCWorld mag, and they talk about them there.

They can be defeated by using gummi-bears - soft gelatine sweets.

Make a mould of your finger, or whoevers finger, using clay. Melt the gummi bears until liquid, pour them into the mould, when dry they pass the text

So much for technology.....