FaceTec, A Startup Aiming To Bring Face Recognition Option On All Smartphones

The most talked about feature during iPhone X release was its facial recognition ability to unlock the phone. It is unique in a way passwords are not. Your face cannot be duplicated while your password can be cracked.

Interesting: US government confronts Apple on Face ID mishap

Now there is a Startup in Las Vegas that is trying to bring 3-D face recognition option to all the smartphones in the world.

The Zoom technology of FaceTec uses a different method than the one Apple uses to ensure whether you are a human or just a photo or video of one. Also, it makes sure that you are the rightful owner of the smartphone. The distortion that occurs as you take your face closer to the phone’s camera is used to figure out the difference in distortion in images taken during, say, a stock trading app, and those images already on your phone.

There has been work done for quite a while now to find an alternate option for passwords. Researchers have come with fingerprint scanning, iris scanning, and facial recognition option. Till now facial recognition is the most popular option around the world. Now Apple introducing it in iPhone X is great but what FaceTec is doing is trying to make it available on all phones. Thus making life easier for smartphone users unanimously.

The startup has been working on its face authentication for almost four years and they hope that companies like banks would add the feature to their apps, said CEO of FaceTec Kevin Alan.

Zoom Login is a demo app for the feature on Android and iOS aiming to see how enrollment and verification steps work. For enrollment, you need to take selfies from various angles and for login user need to do the same thing again but this time by keeping the phone closer to you, right in front. Even in the dark, the feature will work.

Rich Mogull, analyst, and CEO at security research company Securosis said, that if it’s totally software-based it means that “it would need additional hardware protection to achieve equivalent levels of security” in comparison to Apple’s face-scanning technology.

He further said that FaceTec can get its technology operational and obviously it will be more secure than simple two-dimensional facial recognition, “but I’d be shocked if it was as usable or secure as alternative methods we now see being adopted.”