Could your ear replace the fingerprint?

Yahoo is exploring alternative forms of biometric authentication in a bid to replace expensive fingerprint scanners.

Yahoo is looking into ways of using a smartphone owner’s ear rather than a fingerprint or password, by using the touchscreen as the image sensor, which would be far cheaper.

It’s also looking to use fists and even the way people grip their smartphone.

“Due to their cost, capacitive fingerprint scanners have been limited to top-of-the-line phones, a result of the required resolution and quality of the sensor,” the Yahoo Labs team said on its website.

The system is dubbed Bodyprint and has had initial trials with 12 participants.

While the input resolution of a touchscreen is relatively low, “the surface area is large, allowing the touch sensor to scan users’ body parts, such as ears, fingers, fists and palms by pressing them against the display”, the team said.

The method dentified body parts with 99.98% accuracy and users with 99.5% accuracy. Scanning ears achieved a 99.8% accuracy rate, according to the team.

Biometrics expert Prof Angela Sasse, from University College London’s department of computer science, said that police already use ears as a method of identification.

In Switzerland such methods are used at the scene of a robbery, to help identify the offender, she commented.

“Burglars tend to listen on the windowpane to see if anyone is home,” police then take a print of the ear, similar to a fingerprint, she added.