<p style="text-align: justify;">The selfie craze has been going on for quite a while and <a href="http://adobochronicles.com/2014/03/31/american-psychiatric-association-makes-it-official-selfie-a-mental-disorder/">according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA)</a> taking selfies is a mental disorder. You may or may not like taking selfies, but this mental disorder might just become the newest security method for consumers to approve online payments as MasterCardis said to be working on a mobile app that requires users to use their smartphone’s camera take a selfie to make secure payments.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The new software is being tested by the company and will basically scan the user’s face from the selfie, to confirm the identity to authorise payments. This new method is an upgrade to the ‘SecureCode’ password system for online payments and the company hopes by adding the two methods they will reduce password theft. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/01/technology/mastercard-facial-scan/">Talking to CNN</a>, Ajay Bhalla, President, Enterprise Safety and Security at MasterCard, believes that passwords can be a pain and forgetful, the new generation is into selfies and they will love it and embrace it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Facial recognition might not be the best or the most secure way as there are ways by which one can bypass this system. To address this issue, MasterCard will be using a system where the face scanner will require the user to blink to confirm that the person is actually real at not just a picture. Apart from facial recognition, the application will also be able to use the smartphone camera to identify a customer’s fingerprint. Even this method does not sound very promising as there could be concerns as to how efficient the scanning of fingerprints via a camera will be when compared to traditional hardware based fingerprint scanners.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Using biometrics to confirm one’s identity definitely seems very fascinating, but there are a plenty of security concerns before they could be implemented in our daily lives. It is the initial phase and hopefully in a couple of years, software developers will make biometric verification safe and secure.</p>
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