Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Eye-Tracking Could Outshine Passwords If Made User-Friendly

We forget our highly secretive combinations, so we frequently have them reset and sent to our cellphones and alternative email addresses. We come up with clever jumbles of letters and words, only to mess up the order. We sit there on the login screen, desperately punching in a code we should know by heart.

Despite their inefficiencies, passwords are still the most common electronic authentication systems, protecting everything from our bank accounts, laptops and email to health information, utility bills and, of course, our Facebook profiles. While fingerprint- and eye- and face-recognition authentication technology is progressing, these biometric security systems haven't yet gone mainstream.

It is found in a recent study that the user's experience could be the key to create a system that doesn't rely on passwords.

"How humans interact with biometric devices is critically important for their future success," "This is the beginning of looking at biometric authentication as a socio-technical system, where not only does it require that it be efficient and accurate, but also something that people trust, accept and don't get frustrated with."

A new biometric authentication technique that identifies people based on their eye movements has been developed. For instance, users simulated withdrawing money from an ATM. The prototype -- an ATM-lookalike computer screen with eye-tracking technology -- presented three separate types of authentication: a standard four-number PIN, a target-based game that tracks a person's gaze, and a reading exercise that follows how a user's eyes move past each word. With each, researchers measured how long it took and how often the system had to recalibrate.

Eye-tracking technology uses infrared light and cameras. The light reflects off the surface of the eyeball back to the camera when a user's eye is following a dot or words on the computer screen. The tracking device picks up the unique way each person's eye moves.

The ATM scenario has been chosen because it's familiar to most people and many machines already have a basic security camera installed.

The goal of eye-tracking signatures is to enable inexpensive cameras instead of specialized eye-tracking hardware. This system can be used by basically any technology that has a camera, even a low-quality webcam.

But when authentication failed, not recognizing the users during one trial made to lose faith in the eye-tracking systems. The future eye-tracking technology should give clear error messages or directions on how users should proceed if they get off track.

The researchers plan to look next at developing similar eye-tracking authentication for other systems that use basic cameras such as desktop computers. A similar design could be used to log in or gain access to a secure website.

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