Hack My Sweat I Doubt It

Security and identity have become hyperfocused issues in the tech world, and for good reason. In a world where all data is available and right now, the data that’s not available becomes very valuable. That missing data is your data, and lots of people want it. Then again, lots of people just want to prove their ability to one-up technology, to prove that humans are still in charge.

Anyway, a week after the iPhone’s new face recognition screen lock feature was released, it was proven to be beneath the powers of human-powered ingenuity. We now have to think twice about face rec security.

On those heels, we have another idea that might be even better – using your sweat. This isn’t your thumbprint, but your sweatprint, your amino acid profile.

Each one of us has a distinct signature of chemicals in our sweat, just like how we have a distinct set of ratios that underlie our facial features.

Chemist proposes 'sweat analysis' to better secure electronics

Nov 2017, phys.org

Some intricacies about this I thought were interesting:

To build a profile, the device would first have a "monitoring period" in which it would continuously measure its owner's sweat levels at various times of the day. For example, those who work overnight shifts would have a vastly different profile at 2 a.m. than those who work day shifts. Other factors, including age, biological sex, race and physiological state of the individual would also play a role.

Image source: link

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On a very tangential note, I heard the other day someone trying to distinguish between monkeys and humans, and saying that they have no sense of what's going on in other places. If they don't see it, it doesn't happen. And how some birds will hook up with one mate for domestic-resources, but find another to secretly copulate with (it all depends on availability, she wants better genes for her kids, but those mates are already taken, so they just do it in secret). And the original mate has no idea. Just like monkeys have no idea what's going on behind their backs. But do they? They can't smell that stuff? Maybe that's understood, and I'm just jumping the gun. The point I'm trying to make here is that smell as a biographical marker has a lot of information with it.