Defending The Kingdom

Straight from the “how cool is that?” department:

You are the victim of identity theft and the fraudster calls your bank to transfer money into their own account. But instead of asking them for your personal details, the bank assistant simply presses a button that causes the phone to produce a brief series of clicks in the fraudster’s ear. A message immediately alerts the bank that the person is not who they are claiming to be, and the call is ended.

But there are still a few hurdles before the technique can be used, including this one:

“It has to be able to reliably recognise people over long time periods,” he says. “For example, a fingerprint taken from a 20-year-old is still valid when they are 60.”

Of course, investigators would have been equally stymied by limited evidence crimes involving non-twins before DNA analysis was possible, but our expectations are higher now:

Saved by their indistinguishable DNA, identical twins suspected in a massive jewelry heist have been set free. Neither could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence.