(Chinese Version)

This isn’t the first time that I have written about this subject for TMTpost. In the last two articles, I mainly wrote about why people would want to do this and the benefits they would have. For a more detailed discussion, please check out “What will become of your Internet account and card information by 2048?” and “What would result from a National Information Database?”. But this article will look at the matter from the perspective of all the work that has been done and the development of uniform accounts and the elimination of passwords.

Uniform accounts and password elimination

This is one problem of many that the Internet age has introduced. On the surface, it seems to be a mere problem of convenience, not as dire an issue as that of Internet security. But actually, the resolution of this problem is going to incur some surprising social changes, leading us directly to the rebirth of the entire Internet ecosystem and changing people’s lifestyles.

The current user account system is complex and diverse, and multiple passwords are difficult to remember. You don’t even need me to tell you about this; everyone has had these user experiences. Netizens who are a bit older have had no less than a couple dozen accounts, from their earliest experiences in playing online games to things like the social networking software and Internet banking account that they use later on. The total number of accounts a person has might not be completely clear, and it’s probably difficult to remember them all. Thus, password management software was born.

But account password management software comes with one drawback—namely a lack of security. Using account management software to manage all of one’s own accounts means handing over all of your privacy to a third-party. As soon as the server or computer is attacked, much of your privacy is gone, which is extremely scary. So this sort of software hasn’t really come too far along in its development. But account and password management is a new market. So what’s to be done?

Two directions have emerged in this market. The first direction is to establish uniform accounts, while the other is to eliminate the need for passwords through the use of cutting-edge technology. Currently, the two most commonly used account management systems on the market are Sina and Tencent, both of which rely on a massive number of users. Although one can also access a few other account management systems, they have fewer users compared to Sina and Tencent. Sina and Tencent really have too many users; almost all Internet users access these two platforms.

But in the mobile Internet age, in addition to these two account management systems, another most commonly used tool is definitely cell phone numbers. If we really want to establish a uniform nationalized account management system, then basing it on cell phone numbers is the natural choice. You may not have QQ or WeChat or Weibo, but you definitely have a cell phone number (unless you’re an infant or small child). If you don’t even have a cell phone number, then I don’t think you would be breaking your head over the questions we’re discussing here.

Cell numbers are the natural basis for uniform account systems

Why are cell phone numbers the natural basis for uniform account system? The answer is very simple. Who hasn’t had the experience of forgetting an account password? When this happens, you have two choices to recover the password, either through email or cell phone verification. The website will either send you a link where you can change your password or will send you a temporary password. When you’re signing into online banking, everyone knows that there is a randomized password that is different each time, and almost all of the security comes from this design. The reasoning behind password recovery is very similar to this; it relies on generating a temporary password to sign into one’s account.

So if that is the case, then what is the use of a fixed password, when it is good enough to use a cell number or a temporary password? Mobile Internet apps are designed in this way; for example, if you’ve lost your WeChat password, a verification number will be sent to the cell phone number attached to your account, and with this you will be able to change your password. It’s not only WeChat that is doing it this way. The American giant Twitter, originator of microblogs, is also doing this, and doing it well. WeChat is still using the password function, but Twitter has moved directly to using verification numbers to sign in.

Last October, at Twitter’s first international developers’ conference, Twitter promoted “Digits” to third parties, software for mobile user sign-in technology. “Digits” is a sign-in product that sends verification numbers through cell phones and SMS. In January of this year, Twitter officially promoted the use of this technology on Twitter products, as well as for web products.

When a user uses “Digits” technology, he is asked whether he wants to use a cell phone to sign into his account, thereby receiving user approval of the technology. As soon as the user confirms that this is what he wants, he will have to continue to use this way of accessing his account. The goal of this technology is to establish a third-party uniform account system. In this way, all products using “Digits” will be centralized through the cell phone number, and the user will no longer need to remember so much annoying account information but will only need to have cell phone in hand to sign onto any web product or software he wants.

There was no more explanation than this in the information Twitter released about “Digits”. They were just excited to tell everyone that the developers could now leave all research into security issues to Twitter and devote more of their time to the research and development of product functions. There is one key question in this that wasn’t raised: what do users do if they lose their cell phone? In an account system that is centered around the cell phone and verification numbers, if you lose your cell phone, it’s equivalent to handing over all of your digital property to another person.

This apparently more convenient technology doesn’t seem very safe, and there are still many areas that need to be improved and refined. But all major mobile phone companies are researching these security issues related to cell phone loss, and people are most familiar with solutions such as mobile phone theft location software and Apple’s fingerprint sign-in technology.

A variety of biometric technologies

Biometric technologies sound really complicated and important, but there are already many uses of this technology in our lives. The most common usage for regular people is the daily timecard at work, which confirms your work attendance through fingerprint punch card, which is one of the most typical forms of biometric technology. But the man who has really led ordinary citizens to pay attention to biometric technology is Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma.

In 2015, Jack Ma spoke in Hanover, Germany, at the opening ceremony of the Communications and Information Technology Fair. Ma unveiled the latest Alipay technology “Smile to Pay” face recognition payment system and demonstrated the technology by purchasing a gift to present to the Hanover IT Fair through Taobao. No one paid any attention to the present itself, everyone was immersed in the excitement of payment through face recognition. But very soon after, rumors began circulating through the market that all a person would need to do in order to get around the system would be to take a photograph.

So is face recognition viable? Of course it is, but we need to overcome the technical difficulties of differentiating real faces from photographic faces. As I see it, face recognition only appears to be new; it may not be any more convenient than fingerprints and it may in fact be even trickier to operate. Similar technologies include the iris print and the palm print. Out of all types of recognition technologies, fingerprinting seems to be the most convenient. The others just look charming.

Actual integration of passwords and human bodies

Science always has an element of unlimited fantasy, and using recognition techniques in place of a password just doesn’t quite satisfy the curiosity of many scientists and businesspeople. And so a new technology has been born, using the human body for a password. In the past, any technology one wanted to use required the help of an external device to obtain a password. Now, this new technology makes the human body into a password.

Simply put, you don’t even need any “recognition” tool; you are your own password. There is one unalterable natural defect in any recognition technology, whether you’re talking about face recognition or fingerprinting or palm printing. With age, the human face will change, and injury or plastic surgery can also cause fingerprint or palm print defects to occur. This could result in a user’s being unable to set up her account.

But there is one thing that remains the same unless one is dead, which under normal circumstances will not change—the heartbeat. Even though a person’s heartbeat might speed up when she is nervous, leading to changes in the heartbeat waveform, one’s heartbeat model essentially remains the same. There are presently many companies that have begun to research the heartbeat as a biological sample to build a heartbeat recognition template, implanting thin silicon chip embedded in the skin to monitor heart activity, with these chips serving as built-in miniature ECG sensors. This would lead to the elimination of the need for accounts and passwords.

This is a lot like when we play games and need to unlock items sent to us. The body just needs to go to the right place and the appropriate equipment and items will be unlocked and will start to work. There is a very strong science fiction rhetoric in all this.

There are other ways to detect body features, such as swallowing capsules to detect blood sugar levels in the body and using that metric as a body ID. The capsule itself gets electric charge from stomach acid. Vein recognition technology is also being researched. Jonathan LeBlanc, leader of Paypal’s global development and technology promotion team, has recently given a speech about “eliminating all passwords” in Europe and the United States. He believes scientific and technological development is already adequately advanced, and that it is completely possible to bring about the “integration of passwords and human bodies.”

Although the actual implantable chip technology is still being researched, it is not yet possible at present to realize the “integration of passwords and human bodies.” But the research products have already been born. LeBlanc said PayPal’s partners are already working on bracelets equipped with vein recognition and heartbeat recognition technologies.

An increasing number of companies are carrying out research into this type of technology. In Canada, the biometric technological company Bionym has developed a heartbeat identification bracelet, and has launched it on the market.  With new science and technology increasing every day, these products will finally reveal that it is definitely not impossible to implant chips in the body. In fact, there are some examples of this having already happened.

In November 2014, mathematician and biologist Raymond McCauley implanted a micro capsule in his left hand, but he is not the first person to be implanted. As early as 1998, Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University in London had a chip implanted in his forearm, using a computer to track his location like a GPS locator.

But the current volume of chip implantations is not as small as was predicted, and the technology is not as powerful as was once predicted. But in the near future, all of this can be improved upon and realized through technological means.

In another article, I broached the idea of using personal identification numbers to establish a national information repository, a unified system for managing all of citizens’ basic information and data. All of this information would be embedded on a national ID card or on a chip implanted directly in the human body. That idea would need more of a push from the policy sector, but through chip implantation technology, by relying on the help of technology and capital, this could bring about the “integration of passwords and human bodies.”

In the following article, I will discuss other similar research articles. The discussion of this subject is forever ongoing, and the magic of science and technology will never get old, opening up an especially large space for human imagination. From our vantage point, many things we once saw only on movie screens have already appeared. Our era is moving toward the era of science fiction, and we all eagerly await the changes it brings around the world! 

(This article is published edited by TMTpost with authorization from @Eric, please note reference and hyperlink when reproduce.)

Translated by Jennifer Smith (Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.