One Small Fingerprint from Man, One Giant Scan for Mankind
Touch ID was released from Apple four years ago, however, does anyone know how it works?
A Twitter notification, an Instagram alert, and the dreaded missed text from your mom. What do these have in common? They all prompt you to unlock your phone to view them. A recent study has found that the average cell phone user unlocks their phone 2,617 times a day. In 2013, Apple decided to make getting into your phone even easier with the creation of Touch ID.
The concept seems easy. You hold your finger to the home button and within seconds your phone is unlocked and ready to use. While people rejoiced that they now could save those useless three seconds it took to type in their password, does anyone really know how Touch ID functions?
Imagine a regular Tuesday afternoon at the grocery store. Mary’s cart has less than ten items, so she makes her way to the self checkout. She runs her loaf of bread against the scanner and the name and price of the item pops up on the screen. Mary has no perception of how the device retrieved and computed that information, but she goes on about her day. This is Touch ID.
The first step in understanding Touch ID has to start with knowing the location. The home button is the small circular button at the bottom of your phone screen, which is enclosed by a silver ring. This silver ring is made of stainless steel and acts as an alarm. When the finger is placed on the home button, the ring senses and alarms the scanning sensor to begin the process.
The sensor is extremely thin, small, and placed below a thick barrier made of Sapphire Crytal. When the sensor is alerted that the finger is ready to be scanned, it takes a high resolution scan of the finger. This scan goes below the dermis level, conveniently named sub-dermis level, which focuses on all the ridges, loops, and crevices in the fingerprint. However, this scan isn’t like the scanner that your thirty-six year old coworker’s son would use to scan his behind.
The scanner uses biometrics, which is a fancy word for measuring physical characteristics. There is no picture stored somewhere on your phone of your fingerprint that will be compared to what the scanner will create. Instead, the program that is stored in a chip on the phone acts like a mathematical genius. Each crevice, swirl, and loop is turned into a number. This equation of numbers is stored and every time Touch ID is used, the sensor will compare the numerical values of the finger scanned to the one stored to see if it matches. Imagine your fingerprint’s equation equals ten and someone who tries to get into your phone has an equation that equals five. Since they don’t equal, that fingerprint will be denied.
When creating your fingerprint for your first scan, the program will instruct you to place your finger in several different areas, so that way it can get a full scan to get as much information on your fingerprint as it can. The more data the program has, the easier it will be to compare the fingerprint scanned to the equation stored in the phone. With all this personal information, where does it all go?
Thankfully, your fingerprint’s scan is not stored in the cloud, whatever that is. To keep your information private from hackers, this information is sent to a small chip in the phone called the A7 Chip. Within this chip is what we could consider a very large vault with a wheel that would take seven people to unlock. It’s simply named the Secure Enclave. This makes sure that none of the data is shared on any apps that could allow for it to be accessed and stolen.
This process itself is not exactly groundbreaking. Biometrics being used for security started years ago. More recently, other companies like Lenovo, have been using the fingerprint scanning process on their laptops. Apple has taken this process and applied it not only to cellphones, but to their laptops. The same chip has been placed in them to read and store fingerprints. This system has evolved from just unlocking phones to being able to be used for logging into bank accounts, signing verified documents, and purchasing items.
With more personal information, Apple’s Touch ID is trusted to be used with more secure documents that could be on your phone. The ability to scan bills and other information that can’t be easily accessed is now authenticated by a fingerprint scan. The fingerprint can also be connected to your iTunes account, which would allow for apps to be purchased through a scan.
As Touch ID’s uses are growing exponentially, so are the different pieces of technology that are based around it’s very programming. The development for Face ID, which is the same concept, except instead of a fingerprint, the scanner will scan and document an equation for your face, has been the topic of the new IPhone. The influence of Touch ID on people was weighed in on by Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, stating, “Initially people thought ‘oh, Apple’s done something that’s totally not going to work and I’m not a believer and I’m not gonna use this feature.’ Now everyone’s worried because they can’t imagine life without Touch ID.”
In today’s day and age, people are so quick to click through terms and conditions and sign that they have read without even knowing what was asked of them. This creates an idea that the fine print isn’t always important, when in reality it is. Each day, people mindlessly use their personal fingerprint to get in their phone, not even understanding where it goes. Apple’s chief design officer, Jonathan Ive, spoke on this saying, “I feel that it’s lovely when as a user you’re not aware of the complexity, even though it’s very clear how it’s solved.” The fingerprint is something that is unique to each person and if it were to be taken by someone else, that person’s life could be affected greatly.
