Login To Websites Using Your Fingerprint On Android
The internet has become somewhat of an unsafe place with reports of breaches coming in regularly. This has forced mega-companies like Google to pour resource and manpower into research on how best to protect data from users of their products and services from being tampered with by unauthorized parties.
Before, verifying if the person trying to access sensitive data is really who they claim to be is done through the orthodox methods of inputting passwords and email addresses or occasionally prompting the user to enter their login credentials even while still signed in.
Though this method is secure, however, having to re-enter one’s password every time can be cumbersome especially if the password is long and complicated.
In a blog post, the search giant announced it’s rolling out a new authentication method for Android-Powered devices where users can securely verify their identity when logging into websites with their Fingerprints. Since the feature is heading to Android devices, other login methods like pins and passwords are supported with the possibility of face unlock being added somewhere down the line.
Not only is logging in with your fingerprint less tedious than using a password, but it is also a lot more secure too as the method leverages protocols made available through the FIDO2, W3C WebAuthn, and FIDO CTAP standards. These technologies were jointly developed by tech firms in a bid to make passwords absolute and ushering the era of other authentication methods like physical security keys, fingerprints, or biometrics
At the moment, the service is only available on the Company’s Password Manager platform with the likelihood of it coming to its proprietary services like Gmail and non-Google platforms.
To put to rest any fears anyone might have about the company keeping data from your scanned fingerprint, Google explained that your actual biometric data is only stored on your device and never sent to its servers and the only data its keeping is the cryptographic proof that you’ve correctly scanned is relayed to authenticate.
To use the new authentication method, you will need a device that is running on Android 7 and above and has a fingerprint sensor.
