 TITLE: How Can Biometrics Protect Your Identity? CONTENT: How Does Biometric Verification Work?\n-------------------------------------\nWith biometrics—you are the password. And if you have a newer iPhone or Android device, you already have first-hand experience with this technology if you use your fingerprint or face to unlock your device.\nIn order to use biometrics to verify your identity, you need to first register or store an input that can't be replicated without your presence such as a fingerprint or a scan of your face. When you access the system later, you'll provide the same input and it'll be compared against what's stored.\nThere are two main categories of biometric inputs, physical and behavioral:\n*   **Physical biometric inputs** include things like fingerprints, facial patterns, handprints and eye patterns. Depending on the biometric device used, one or more of those features are scanned and checked against your profile to verify that it's you.\n*   **Behavioral biometric inputs** may be your voice, location and typing patterns, and may be deployed on their own or in addition to physical inputs. When accessing a system that uses behavioral biometrics, you may be prompted to say something out loud so it can verify your voice. Other behavior, like the way you type, could also be used to verify your identity on some devices.\nFor most biometric systems, there are three components that process the biometric input:\n1.  Sensor. A sensor is what reads your biometric input, whether it's behavioral or physical.\n2.  Computer. The computer in this case is the system that stores the data your input will be compared against when verifying your identity.\n3.  Software. The software helps to process this whole transaction, acting as the intermediary between the sensor and the computer. The software will do the thinking, processing your biometric input, looking for the matching profile and approving or denying the authorization.\nThat all comes together in practice like this in a system that uses fingerprint biometrics: The sensor is the part you'll touch so your fingerprint can be captured and sent to the computer. The computer will then use software to verify your fingerprint against verified fingerprints in a database and decide to grant you access based on whether it finds a match. END