A free Public Service

SCAMS BULLETIN Host Jay White is an inactive attorney in San Mateo County, California.

April 3, 2023

BIOMETRICS SCAMS

Attribution: scambusters.org

Biometrics is the technology of using facial, fingerprint, and voice recognition to confirm your identity. It may promise to improve security and maybe even replace passwords.

Security pros say we will all soon be using fingerprints, facial, eye-iris, voice recognition, and other forms of biometrics, even DNA, in place of passwords.

Scammers and hackers have developed software and theft techniques so they can use biometrics and pretend they are you. Millions of public biometric records are reported for sale on the Dark Web for as little as $5.

How is Biometric Data Stolen?

The biggest haul of stolen fingerprint, voice, and facial records comes from hacking the systems that store them. It happened  going back to 2015 when the US Office of Personnel Management was hacked, giving access to fingerprint data of 5.6 million people.

Social Media

More worrying from a public perspective is the amount of biometric information we give away freely on social media – from high resolution photos and videos on Facebook to pictures of eye makeup that users posted on TikTok. Experts have shown that these images can be used to trick victims. By posting photo and video content, we expose our faces, retina, iris, ear shape patterns, and in some cases, palms and fingerprints.

Things you can do to reduce the risk of being victimized by the hackers and tricksters include:

*Use two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2FA and MFA) on every site that allows you to.

*Think twice before you provide your biometrics to anyone. Why do they need it? How do they secure it? Note: This is quite different from providing fingerprint or facial images on a mobile device. Thart data is stored securely on the device, not on a hackable server somewhere else.

*Protect the sources of biometric data you carry around with you, like passports, driver’s licenses, and Green Cards.

*Monitor all your accounts, credit scores, and records for evidence of unusual activity. Since biometric hacking, just like password stealing, is mainly used for identity theft, at least you’ll know sooner and act faster if you regularly check these.

*Use a Dark Web monitoring service to see if your ID information, including email addresses, passwords, and biometrics, have been exposed. Some Internet security software includes this as part of or as an add-on to their services.

*If you want to check now, for free, on the Dark Web, you can do so at https://scan.aura.com/. Note that the provider, security firm Aura, offers a paid monitoring service but you don’t need to sign up for this.

Unlike passwords, you can’t change your biometric data if it gets stolen. If that happens, it could affect you for the rest of your life.

                                                                         #