Your Fingerprints Are Everywhere
By: Nancy | April 17, 2008 | Category: Home and Family
You cover your world with them—invisible markers of where you've been and what you've done. And as technology changes and the country focuses more on security, your fingerprints are being used to identify you more often, in more situations.
Fingerprinting and background checks have been standard for a long time for government and law enforcement job applicants. But many states are now requiring applicants for mortgage broker licenses and childcare and teaching positions to get fingerprinted for background checks. And as their teachers are being fingerprinted, child safety experts recommend that kids themselves should be fingerprinted too, so parents will have a record of their prints in case their kids are lost or abducted.
While those old-fashioned, thumb-on-the-inkpad fingerprints work for background checks and for identifying your kids, technology has helped develop a whole different way of collecting and using your prints using biometrics, the automated system of identifying you electronically by your unique physical characteristics like your fingerprints and irises, and by your movements like the way you walk, sign your name and type on a keyboard.
Even if the term "biometrics" is as new to you as it is to me, you may already be using fingerprint biometric equipment if you clock in at work with your finger and not a time card, you've been to a major theme park in the past couple years or use a fingerprint reader attached to your computer instead of typing in passwords.
This biometric equipment works great most of the time for most people...except those rare few, like a coworker of mine, born without fingerprints. It was hard for her to get her FBI clearance to work in our agency, but it sure makes for great cocktail party conversation.
What's your experience—have you encountered biometric equipment on the job or in your travels? What do you think about it?
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