[mac4theblind] Fwd: This Quick Trick Can Vastly Improve The iPhone's Fingerprint Scanner

From: David Hilbert Poehlman <poehlman1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "mac4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <mac4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:27:42 -0500

\
The Huffington Post  |  By Timothy Stenovec
Posted: 11/20/2013 12:46 pm EST
h my new iPhone 5S was different. Often, after placing my finger on the Home 
button, it wouldn't read my print and I'd be prompted to "try again."

Although the fingerprint scanner works well for many people, and has garnered 
positive reviews from some of the most prominent tech critics, others have 
found that it doesn't work well for them.

What to do? Apple recommends rescanning your finger (and, of course, making 
sure it's clean and dry) or trying other fingers if you are having problems. 
The company also notes that things like lotion, oils and dry skin, or 
activities like swimming or exercising "may affect fingerprint recognition."

But I had an idea: Touch ID works with up to five different fingers, so what if 
I scanned my thumb multiple times, essentially telling my iPhone that it's 
different fingers? After all, I rarely use a finger other than my right thumb 
to press the Home button, so those other four slots were empty.

I thought that having more -- and more varied -- prints of my thumb could only 
help, so I tried it by "enrolling," as Apple calls it, my thumb two more times. 
The result was fantastic -- Touch ID now works much better than it did before, 
probably over 90 percent of the time.

I'm not the only one who had this idea.


Shane Hockersmith, a mechanic in the U.S. Army, told The Huffington Post in an 
email that now that he's scanned the same finger multiple times, Touch ID works 
nearly "every time" -- up from "about half the time."

A colleague of mine who was having readability issues with her new 5S also saw 
improvement by employing the strategy.

I was unsure about my theory, and Apple would not comment on whether or not it 
would improve Touch ID. But Michael Fiske, the founder of Biogy, a privacy 
company that focuses on cryptography and biometrics, said that adding more 
prints could, in fact, make Touch ID more reliable.

"Entering multiple examples of the same print enhances pattern matching," Fiske 
said. "Basically, it enables the pattern matching to be more flexible." Adding 
more prints can lower the rate of false rejects, he said -- when the right 
fingerprint doesn't give access to a phone.

Fiske likened scanning your finger multiple times to teaching a child how to 
identify leaves from an oak tree. If you show the child three leaves from an 
oak tree, she'll be more likely to later recognize an oak tree leaf than had 
you just shown her one.

The workaround is by no means perfect. While it has improved my experience, 
Cpl. Hockersmith's, and my colleague's, my mom said that Touch ID still doesn't 
work well enough for her to use it.

CNET offers additional tips for using Touch ID, so check out that article if 
it's still not working. And let us know in the comments below if this strategy 
worked for you.


-- 
Jonnie Appleseed
with his
hands-on Technolog(eye)s
Touching The internet
Reducing Technology’s disabilities
One Byte at a time

[mac4theblind] Fwd: This Quick Trick Can Vastly Improve The iPhone's Fingerprint Scanner

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