Other types of readers made by Identix partners are found on its Web site. Prices are at the point that BioLink vice president of business development Mike Thompson hopes to persuade major Web portals and financial institutions to buy his U-Match Biolink Mouse in bulk and give it to their best customers as a premium. U-Match and most competitive finger scanners can already be configured to substitute for your usual Web site passwords, says Thompson. Of course, that only provides convenience, not added security. Truly secure browsing requires an appropriate authentication and authorization server on the Web site, and those are only now hitting the market.
Vendors plan to provide their services for a monthly licensing fee.
Some are building partnerships with providers of related technologies in order to offer a menu of services. Privacy Concerns With costs under control and accuracy unparalleled, the last remaining issue to the adoption of biometrics seems to be a lingering concern about its potential invasiveness, especially the technologies, like retina scanning of the back of the eyeball, that require close proximity to a reading device. There s also lingering concern that various hand scans could be used to collect fingerprints. But that s not how it works. While biometrics may make you more efficient at matching your Web site visitors to the customer profiles you keep of them, it doesn t provide any more information about the user at the point of access than the typical password system.