If you use eBay and Firefox frequently, you have an opportunity to get in on “Firefox Companion for eBay,” a new alpha test program. Recently, eBay has made an effort to make advancements and improvements with their service while Firefox has been putting major effort into securing as much of the market as possible. They’re teaming up to offer both eBay and Firefox users the best of both worlds.
Though security applications that verify a person’s identity based on their physical attributes, such as fingerprint readers or iris scanners, have been in use for some time, biometric security has only recently started to appear in mobile phones, PDAs and notebook computers where the need for miniaturisation represents a technological challenge.
So far biometric data has been used to tie the device to a person to prevent it from being used illegitimately if lost or stolen. But the IST project SecurePhone is taking a new approach, employing physical attributes to enable the user to digitally sign audio, text or image files, providing proof of their origin and authenticity.
