Teri Krejci, 60, of Huntsville, Alabama, found out she had breast cancer in 2014 while working as a night shift manager at CVS. She underwent six months of chemotherapy and then surgery. Her medical team warned her she might lose her hair and feel nauseous. It never occurred to her that she might lose her fingerprints.
“I was right after my second round of chemotherapy, and I had a Samsung phone with Touch ID, and it kept saying, ‘Fingerprint not detected,'” said Krejci, who is now retired. “And one of the nurses said, ‘Oh, we forgot to tell you that. It will happen.’ They said it could be a while before my fingerprints show up again.”
This caused particular problems because Krejci needed to use fingerprint ID to enter her cancer unit. Every time, someone had to let her into the center, until she finally gave up and was given the code. A decade later, her hands are nearly back to normal, but she says she still has to periodically reset the fingerprint scan on her phone.
Langenberg, the forensic scientist, said fingerprints aren’t going away anytime soon, and he predicts a growing trend toward using multiple biometric factors, such as retina scans and facial recognition, to compensate for them. and For example, fingerprints.
For people who know they have problems with fingerprinting — construction workers or rock climbers, for example — there are things you can do to make your hands easier to read, he says. Stay hydrated and use sanitizing gel or hand lotion right before you get scanned. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, fingerprinting experts say, “We’re not going to do that.”Breast ointmentThis is the “sticky” name often used for cows because it makes your fingers a little sticky, which helps record your fingerprints.
of course, want Many people try to hide their fingerprints, especially criminals. “They often pay a lot of money to have them covered with acid or surgery,” he says. Thomas BuseyHe’s a professor of psychology and brain sciences at Indiana University and has studied the uses of fingerprints. Fingerprint analysis accuracy.
But Langenberg says such extensive procedures often have the opposite effect of what is desired – creating a more unique mark. He gives the example of American gangsters. John Dillinger“When you see red flags like that, you know right away that this person is trying to hide their identity. This is nonsense that’s been going on for 100 years, and it doesn’t work,” Langenberg says.
Busey thinks the focus on using fingerprints for biometric identification is odd: Criminal fingerprinting typically involves recording all 10 fingers and the palm of the hand, capturing a huge amount of detail, while phone, computer and airport scanners use just one finger, or parts of one. Fingerprints are a very limited means of identification if something goes wrong, and they can also be easily leaked.
“You probably have passwords on your computer, and you probably don’t share those passwords with anyone,” Busey says, “but when your fingerprint is your password, you’re literally leaving it on everything you touch.”