You know those peace signs that people love to flash when taking selfies or taking photos? Turns out it probably isn’t a good idea to do so because it seems that thanks to the improvement in camera quality these days, a simple peace sign is more than enough for someone to steal your identity.
This is according to Isao Echizen, a professor at the Digital Content and Media Sciences Research Division of the National Institute of Informatics who spoke to Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun. According to Echizen, he claims to have successfully managed to lift the fingerprints from photos of those exposing their fingers from as far as three meters away.
This is pretty scary especially since biometric security is on the rise these days, where we’re starting to see fingerprint scanners become ubiquitous security measures on smartphones, and it also seems that their popularity could be making a return to laptops as well. However the question is whether or not thieves at the moment could access similar software that could lift fingerprints from photos, but we guess better safe than sorry, right?
However the good news is that Echizen and his team are developing fingerprint anti-theft prevention technology, where with the use of a titanium-based oxide substance, it can obscure fingerprints in photos.