The Blaze – by Liz KlimasImagine one ring, rather, one bracelet to rule them all, allowing you to leave your keys and wallet at home and banish lengthy, character-filled passwords from your mind.
That’s what the Nymi bracelet would let users do. But what if someone took your bracelet, would your valuables be vulnerable?
Not likely because the keycode Nymi uses to unlock your car, log on to your computer and pay for your groceries is your own unique heartbeat.
This isn’t the first time TheBlaze has reported on a heartbeat translating into a personalized password. Researchers at National Chung Hsing University had a proof of concept last year, which delved into this idea.
The device by the Canadian company Bionym uses ECG authentication and motion sensing to perform a variety of functions.
As its website states,”The Nymi tells the world, you are you, allowing you to securely communicate your identity to all of your favorite devices.”
Here’s more on exactly how the device works:
When you clasp the Nymi around your wrist it powers on. By placing a finger on the topside sensor while your wrist is in contact with the bottom sensor, you complete an electrical circuit. After you feel a vibration and see the LEDs illuminate, your Nymi knows you are you and your devices will too. You will stay authenticated until your Nymi is taken off.
Check out this promotional video showing many different ways Nymi could be used:
Based on some of the examples in the promo video — opening a hotel room door or paying for a latte — applications that accept Nymi as tool still have to be developed as well, which is why the company has an app developers community as well.
Nymi believes its system could give users more security in an age where everything seems require a log-in password or key.
“To take control of your identity you must have your Nymi, your unique heartbeat and an Authorized Authentication Device (AAD), which would be a smartphone or device registered with our app. The Nymi is also built upon the principles of Privacy by Design, which means that only you control and access your identity and personal information,” Nymi’s website stated.
“The unique thing about the ECG, is that it’s being produced inside your body,” Bionym founder Dr. Karl Martin told The Verge about the device. Unlike other biometic identification, like a finger print or iris image, which can be captured and stolen, a heartbeat is more hidden.
Although, Nymi wouldn’t necessarily prevent devices from being hacked into per se, it could reduce password vulnerability and would streamline some activities.
Nymi is currently on pre-order for $79 with first shipments expected in 2014. Once 25,000 orders have been placed, the price will jump to $99.
One short step to “Why bother with an expensive strap and have a subcutaneous one instead…”
This is the way they want to go, implantation to cover everything and they will monitor anything and everything from how you vote to how you go to the toilet, how many times you diddle your missus and how many times you are diddling someone elses.
The data generated will be like gold dust, big corporations would compile huge databases on this info just how you shop to whether you buy Prep H for that soothing moment, governments will have scanners at every street junction traffic lights and no doubt the car will be checking in with your implant to see if you are intoxicated, drugged up or on the phone.
Our very lives are becoming a de facto currency, this is Bush’s full spectrum data on every living person he said was coming and whether its your scan and shop credit card, bracelets like this, implants, we are losing control of this personal data and losing control on who sees it, uses it, exploits it as we don’t know if an organised crime ring hasn’t struck on the idea of buying the data of people’s holiday habits so they have a shopping list of when you are away to rob your house at their leisure do we?
My, my…how convenient.
but the advertisement didn’t tell you that it also records your every word, transmits your location, knows where you’ve spent every dollar and what you bought with it, and lets cops monitor your heartbeat so they can tell if you’re lying.
Convenient for whom?
I think advertisements for these kinds of Rube Goldberg things is a waste of space that could be used for more informative articles.
Then you get abducted open up everything once you are no longer of use BANG your dead.
Even the biometric stuff can be used away from the body as in carrying the finger (or hand depending on level of security)of the person you are trying to access location, lock boxes and so on…
Hint hint hint 😉
‘Government’ (so-called) monitored GPS included at no extra charge.