Voiceprints being harvested by the millions

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By RAPHAEL SATTER

LONDON (AP) — Over the telephone, in jail and online, a new digital bounty is being harvested: the human voice.

Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords.

"We sometimes call it the invisible biometric," said Mike Goldgof, an executive at Madrid-based AGNITiO, one of about 10 leading companies in the field.

Those companies have helped enter more than 65 million voiceprints into corporate and government databases, according to Associated Press interviews with dozens of industry representatives and records requests in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

FULL story at link.



In this photo taken Sept. 15, 2014, Benoit Fauve, a speech scientist with voice recognition technology company ValidSoft, works on a computer, near screens displaying the voice biometric features of a telephone call during a demonstration at the company{2019}s office in central London. An Associated Press investigation has found that two of America's biggest retail banks, Chase and Wells Fargo, are quietly taking some callers' voiceprints to fight fraud. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20141013/eu--the_voice_harvesters-growing_uses-6cb95c965b.html

[George II]

1. The bastards!!!!

[lutefisk]

2. I wonder if Rich Little could beat it?

I'd like to see a match. Rich Little vs AGNITiO could be the 2014 edition of Big Blue vs Kasparov.

[Thor_MN]

12. Not a chance. Rich Little (or any currrent impressionist) might fool humans

but the wave spectrum of their voices are not even close to the originals they are impersonating.

[kelliekat44]

3. Frankly, I don't give a damn! Maybe they will ID the ISIS beheader? nt

[Fearless]

6. Someone beheaded Isis?

[Live and Learn]

10. Wow, really?

You don't care about our rights? What have we become?

[blkmusclmachine]

4. "Nothing is beyond our reach."

[blkmusclmachine]

5. Pic URL http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7ixvxci7ym0/T2jFO8kOrJI/AAAAAAAAAG0/6u-o6525Obw/s1600/control.jpg

Comments are my own

[whereisjustice]

7. representative, REPRESENTATIVE, GODDAMIT, R-E-P-R-E-S-E-N-T-A-T-I-V-E...

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. Steven Hawking is laughing his ass off.

[Nihil]

11. !

Well played!

[Live and Learn]

9. Good grief, will it never end?

We might as well just toss the Constitution.

[surrealAmerican]

13. Is the sound quality over the phone actually good enough ...

... to positively identify a caller? That's somewhat surprising.

[whatthehey]

14. If it means I don't need to recite 15 fucking code words every time I call the bank go for it.

I am sick to death of security theater in all its forms. What the fuck are the chances that a nefarious actor knows my login, password (rotated every 3 months by unilateral demand and containing an algorithm of numbers and characters different from other security theater producers, natch), SSN, mother's maiden name and first pet's name but would be defeated from his evil purpose of moving money from my checking to my savings account by not knowing where I met my spouse? Was there really that much more fraud when it was just a pin or simple static password?

This nonsense is self-defeating even if you take it seriously. I have a good memory. Very good even. I played King Lear on a week's notice, and anybody who has done that play can tell you that's a memory test. But even I have to maintain a reference document for passwords. Don't get me wrong not the network or main ERP passwords, but get this: I just counted and for work alone I need to maintain 37 passwords, all of which have a max 90 day and min 30 day change mandate. There are 5 mutually exclusive algorithms directing character content and sequence so I can't even repeat very efficiently, and in 19 cases I cannot even change just one digit per iteration, so there is no chance of going from "Fuc07kITsecurityBastards!" to "Fuc08kITsecurityBastards!" At least 12 of these passwords I use less than once a month, and 3 of them only once a year.


So what do I do? Keep a document on the C drive and my phone with an innocuous name listing them all, which is far far less secure than if they just let me use one password for everything and keep it the same unless a major breach occurred. They could even mandate all the usual word sequence and content crap because anyone who is too much of a moron to remember say a 10 digit sequence of letters and characters that they use constantly shouldn't be employed in a system dependent job anyway.

Now let's add up all the website and bank and business accounts, especially those evil twats who suppress browser password autocomplete functionality (I've stopped doing business with some who insist on that bit of heinous fuckery where possible) and we're well past the sanity horizon. "Doing it for your security" my ass - they are doing it to avoid lawsuits and we both know it.

[FormerOstrich]

15. Yes....what you said!

I am completely unconvinced all of these layers of security are anything but hoop jumping.

If I have trouble identifying myself then I would think an imposter wouldn't stand a chance. One of big three (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) has an identifier which is wrong. I had a terrible time registering for the SSA site because of it.

Considering our data is stolen from the sources (CHASE, Home Depot, etc, etc) what difference does it make what password I accessed that data with. The password was to prevent the data from being accessed. Yet, the data was extracted without the use of my password. It can be used for nefarious mean without my password.

There are commercial products for securing your many lists of passwords. I refuse to buy one.

I have a tip for your password list. It's not foolproof but just a tad safer. I keep a text document on my desktop. But instead of the complete password I have a "system".

I have a "core password". Mine happens to be a random letter/number combination but you could use anything you can always remember. For example, "Fuck07IT". When I register at a site I use the core along with anything additional needed for the site's rules. In the text file of passwords I put a * for my core password and whatever affix. For instance, my text file has *&Special which translates to Fuck07IT&Special. Or, Dumb* translates to DumbFuck07IT.

If you wanted to be super secure you could have multiple core passwords and assign multiple special characters.......

Back to the point......I think you are spot on!