Future Phones Could Be Unlocked Using Brain Waves

At the moment one of the trending methods of unlocking one’s phone is through the use of a fingerprint scanner. This has proven to be a relatively quick and easy way to unlock devices, as well as make purchases and fill in passwords, but what about the future? Well iris scanning is another idea that’s being tossed around, but what about brain waves?

According to a report from New Scientist (via Cult of Mac), it seems that brain waves could potentially be used to unlock phones in the future. Apparently this is because our brain waves are unique due to the fact that we react to different words differently. This test was conducted by Blair Armstrong of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language in Spain where he and his team recorded the brain signals of volunteers.

These volunteers were told to read a list of acronyms and a computer was then used to spot the differences between the volunteers. Apparently the brain waves in all the volunteers were distinct enough where they could be identified individually with an accuracy of 94%. So what does this mean?

It means that brain waves have the potential to act as a method of protecting data, although the 94% accuracy is a bit worrying at the moment, but presumably this can be improved upon over time, with Armstrong calling it a very promising start. Of course whether or not this will make it into consumer products in the future remains to be seen, but for now it remains an intriguing idea.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Security