Teri Krejci, 60, of Huntsville, Alabama, found out she had breast cancer in 2014 while working as a night shift manager at CVS. She underwent six months of chemotherapy and then surgery. Her medical team warned her she might lose her hair and feel nauseous. It never occurred to her that she might lose her fingerprints.
“I was right after my second round of chemotherapy, and I had a Samsung phone with Touch ID, and it kept saying, ‘Fingerprint not detected,'” said Krejci, who is now retired. “And one of the nurses said, ‘Oh, we forgot to tell you that. It will happen.’ They said it could be a while before my fingerprints show up again.”
This caused particular problems when Krejci needed to use fingerprint ID to enter her cancer unit. Every time, someone had to let her into the center, until she finally gave up and was given the code. A decade later, her hands are nearly back to normal, but she says she still has to periodically reset the fingerprint scan on her phone.
Langenberg, the forensic scientist, said fingerprints aren’t going away anytime soon, and he predicts a growing trend toward using multiple biometric factors, such as retina scans and facial recognition, to compensate for them. and For example, fingerprints.
Even for construction workers, rock climbers, and other people with known fingerprint problems, there are ways to make your hands easier to read, he says: Make sure you’re hydrated right before the scan, and use a disinfectant gel or hand lotion. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, fingerprinters use “udder ointment,” a type of ointment commonly used on cows, to make the fingers a little sticky, making it easier to record the fingerprint.
of course, want Many people try to hide their fingerprints, especially criminals. “They’re often willing to pay a lot of money to use acid or surgery to hide their fingerprints,” says Thomas Busey, a professor of psychology and brain sciences at Indiana University who studies the use of fingerprints and the accuracy of fingerprint analysis.
But Langenberg says such extensive procedures often have the opposite effect of what’s desired – creating a more unique mark. He cites the example of American gangster John Dillinger, who cut his fingers and poured acid over them, leaving them with scars in the middle but leaving the tips, knuckles and sides all recognizable. “When you see these red flags, you know straight away that this person is trying to hide their identity. It’s nonsense that’s been going on for 100 years and it doesn’t work,” Langenberg says.
Busey thinks the focus on using fingerprints for biometrics is odd: Criminal fingerprinting typically involves recording all 10 fingers and the palm of the hand, capturing a huge amount of detail, while phone, computer and airport scanners use just one finger, or parts of one. If something goes wrong, fingerprints are a very limited means of identification, and can be easily leaked.
“You probably have passwords on your computer, and you probably don’t share those passwords with anyone,” Busey says, “but when your fingerprint is your password, you’re literally leaving it on everything you touch.”
