"Mark Hellmann, an attorney with the Chicago law firm of Foley & Lardner and a specialist in e-commerce, intellectual property and Internet security issues, agrees. "People's voices can change," says Hellmann. "A person can have laryngitis, their voice can get higher or lower, or their accent can change. I came to Chicago from Philadelphia and my accent has changed over the years." Background noise is another problem, Hellmann points out, making an accurate read difficult. Voices also may be stolen-a recording of a user's voice made by a third party, and used to gain access to a secure PC or site.

While these technologies are constantly being enhanced and refined, fingerprinting remains firmly rooted as the most popular biometric ID option. "Fingerprinting will probably be used eventually by most CPA and financial services firms," Hellmann predicts. "People are familiar with it-and they trust it."

The foregoing is an excerpt from an article entitled:Biometric ID Technology Keeps an Eye on your Security Authentication Needs.  Passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs) soon may become relics of our computer past as biometric identification technology takes over the critical task of identifying and authenticating computer users, and permitting access to secure sites, files and Intranets.  By Marc Davis