Intel has ridiculous security. I have to scan my badge 3 times to get inside the lab, and 3 to get outside. Stuck in a corridor? You’re on camera. ;)

@ sapientidiot:

LOL! This is pretty funny. This is why I always say that biometrics are the worst possible authentication system ever invented. They are like a password that can never be changed even after it is compromised.

@ Rob:

Well, at least they use two factor authentication and not rely on the biometrics alone which is encouraging. One must wonder though if it wouldn’t be cheaper, more convenient and more secure to just use an entry pin instead of a fingerprint.

@ JKjoker:

Ah, see – here in US we found a perfect way to deal with the “ñoqui” problem. We just promote them away from the positions that require actual skill. Basically people just fail upwards until they are so high up the chain they actually don’t have to do any real work, and people working underneath them are sort of expected to quietly smooth out and fix all the stupid decisions they make. At least that’s how it seems to work in the technology sector. ;)

@ Neo Angelus:

Every 3 weeks is a bit to often. It is much more effective to train users to use long and strong pass phrases than to make them change the password so frequently.

@ Ricardo:

Someone really needs to translate that Mythbusters biometrics episode and send it to Brazil. :P

In Brazil it is now trendy to have biometrics at the entrance of commercial buildings. It is a pain! Every time you go to a new building (even if you never plan to return there in your life), you have to give your ID to create an account and register your finger read.

Then, you have to bear the queues of people that form in these buildings’ entrance because, you know, you have to put your finger 3 or 4 times to get it to read correctly.

At work we had the three week password change thing. It was quite annoying as I can’t remember anything and I had to change my password every three weeks.(That’s how I got locked out of my bank account multiple times.)

So after I was prompted to change my password again I went on a small tirade(more a louder than necessary venting off my emotions), after which I got help from the people who had worked there for quite some time. Instead of really changing the password you would just append one “1” to your password. So you just had to try any number of ones before you got the right password. Later I found out that almost everyone was using this technique. Still not secure, but I don’t think you can expect your employees(or at least me) to remember a password, which changes every three weeks. (It took me about a year to remember the 4-digit lock code, which we have at my other job.)

heh, at my moms work they implemented 3 card swipe thingies as a “check in” system to punish ppl coming late about 2 years ago

first they desynchronized them (they were so cheap that each card reader has its own independent clock instead of being centralized) so you had one running 15 mins late and another running 30 mins late

now they caught some dude swiping a keychain with like 20 cards on camera (there is a camera pointing right at the readers), the solution: fingerprint scanners (which of course will be the cheapest ones you can easily fool with a high dpi print/photocopy of the thumbprint)

i should mention that my mom works at a government building and in my country we have a HUGE, HUUUUUUUGEEEEE “ñoqui” problem (ppl that get paid but never ever work, often have better salaries than real workers if they got their “job” though syndicate/political party contacts, they recently tried to trim them off which is why they imposed the card reader thing in the first place)

Hey Luke, I just started a new job at a utility company and the control room (and our server room unfortunately) is under some pretty heavy security (or at least the most I’ve had to subject myself too). Every time I need to go back there to check on a server or what not I have to swipe my RFID card AND have my thumb print scanned. However, if I don’t place my thumb just right on the scanner it doesn’t scan. A lot of times I have to do it three times just to get it to work. Kind of a pain really.

When Bell Canada introduced their “voice authetication” feature for customers to verify there accounts using the phrase “At bell my voice is my password”, I was reminded of that movie sneakers where they sneak into the ultra secure building using (among other things) a tape recorded splicing of some guys voice they got by sending someone on a date with him.

A friend of mine went so far as to call a canadian, and get him to say all the words required by bell by pretending he was a librarian calling about over due books (i see here you have “for whom the bell tolls” over due). He spliced to words from the call together and had no problem accessing the guys account.

He even did a podcast about it http://www.phonelosers.org/media/plaradio17.mp3