An Element of Skepticism Still Present Towards Biometry in the United States

We are aware by now of the advancements being made in biometrics, specifically in the form of payments.

However, to what extent are Americans willing to use such innovations in regards to personal information access and security?

Login methods via biometry are becoming more and more available, yet it would seem less Americans are actually willing to use these methods when accessing their accounts.

As it turns out, over half of Americans still prefer the traditional password login to access online services.

Based on a recent study from Yougov on behalf of the US email portal mail.com found that Americans are highly skeptical about biometric authentication methods and are concerned about the risks of the new technologies.

58 percent of Americans prefer manually entered passwords to biometric login methods.

The most used biometric authentication method actually happens to be the fingerprint sensor, which only ten percent of Americans use.

“The survey shows that biometric login methods are far from becoming a mass market. Nevertheless, for more security throughout the Internet it is very important that alternative authentication methods like biometry are being further researched. In order to meet the concerns of users, providers have to fulfill high data protection requirements concerning the storage and use of biometrical data,” says mail.com CEO Jan Oetjen.

There are scarce supporters of these new and innovative technologies. In fact only 22 percent think that biometric login methods are even a good addition to passwords, but only in combination with manual methods like passwords and PIN entry (really making biometric authentication utterly superfluous at that point, cheers to having major trust issues).