<div>If you’re not worried about someone getting into your email account or having a good look at your Whatsapp messages, opening up your work</div><div>docs or coming upon your credit card info – you should be. All of this and more is on the devices we use and the slightest drop in vigilance</div><div>could expose your personal information to someone who has no business going anywhere near it. We all know that. And yet, it’s difficult to</div><div>be on your guard proactively all the time, changing multiple passwords on half a dozen devices and even more accounts. We have technologies</div><div>like fingerprint scanners on phones and some laptops and tablets, but those are sometimes a little troublesome. There’s face recognition</div><div>which commonly available smartphones are now using increasingly to open up access to the device, but that’s been cracked with a photograph before. There’s voice recognition used as a biometric to allow you and only you into the device, but voices are vulnerable to change, noise, and more. So there’s nothing for it but to keep searching for the perfect method.</div><div> </div><div><table align="right" border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 200px;"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/mala-bhargava-mdm.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 200px; margin: 1px; float: right;"></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Mala Bhargava</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>A bunch of neuroscience researchers at the Pyschology department of the Binghamton University in New York, may just have found that perfect way. This is what they say: We know that brainwaves can be measured at the level of the scalp, using electrodes. We know that as EEG. Well, what if the EEG pattern yielded could be correlated with a specific event or situation or stimulus? Such as when a word is presented. Repeat the exact exercise over many sessions and you have an ERP or Event Related Potential. So, these ERPs are unique to individuals, specially when related to meaning.</div><div> </div><div>The researchers isolated patterns that resulted when certain text was presented to an individual – with the meaning unique to that person.<br> </div><div>The accuracy with which the brainwave pattern would come up when presented with the same text was in the region of 85 to 97 per cent. This result was reliable even after a lag o six months.</div><div> </div><div>This tapping into a person’s semantic memory and the brainwave pattern that comes up could certainly be explored to function as a password.</div><div>So you would have to merely think of a specific thing or memory and that is used to get access to a device or even as a security pass into</div><div>a building, for example. Or for banking or any of the other million things that need passwords today.</div><div> </div><div>The brainprint has to translate into everyday usage yet but it won’t be long before it becomes one more level of security in our increasingly technologically empowered lives.</div><div> </div>
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