Passwords have become a regular and often frustrating part of the average American’s life, according to a Cnet News story.
They have also proven to be obsolete as the human brain is not wired for such memorization and the software used to change algorithms used for password encryption has remained the same over the past ten years.
What is just now starting to come about in response to this are a number of services and new technologies vying to assist with or take the place of the many passwords people use each day.
Two methods that are continuing to grow, but at a slow rate due to cost, are biometrics and tokens. Tokens most often work by adding an additional layer security by giving the user a device which will supply a unique code to be entered in addition to the user name and password.
As well, biometrics such as fingerprint and iris scanners or voice recognition are considered very secure, however, implementation costs of these and tokens are currently too high for wide-spread use.
There also is software that contains all of one’s usernames and passwords that requires only a single password to access them to secured online sites of a similar nature, there have been many services designed to relieve the need for remembering passwords.
Additionally there are graphical authentication methods being developed that involve a user clicking on specific pictures or sometimes drawing one and location based authentication which require a user to be logging in from the same computer each time for access.
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