You give yourself away
The rhythm of your typing may be unique enough to forgo computer passwords in the future – and maybe even to predict when you are not yourself – whether due to stress, illness or fraud (it’s not you!)
An article in NewScientist revealed some fascinating experiments by Mike Dowman and associates at the University of Abertay, UK. They ran a study of people entering the same user IDs and passwords, recording how long each key was held down and how long between each keystroke. They then developed software that could identify volunteers by their keystroke “signature” – which was successful 97% of the time!
This detection success rate is apparently similar to other biometric systems in use, like fingerprint scan ports or voice scanners. The exciting finding is that, under stress testing, they could not only identify the volunteers correctly a majority of the time, they could also tell if that volunteer was stressed! While this leads researchers in other fields to imagine the possibilities – the bank can tell you have a gun to your head making that withdrawal, maybe we could monitor keystrokes to diagnose Alzheimer’s – I am just amazed that we give ourselves away – broadcast our uniqueness – in these small, barely conscious movements.
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