Google wants to get rid of your password.
The company has proposed a system it calls "trust scores" to remove the need to remember usual numerical and linguistic credentials using a 'Trust API' on Android phones.
The API would factor in a number of personal identifiers including the way your voice sounds, facial recognition, location in relation to known Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices and typing speed.
Trust scores would vary – games, for example, would require a low trust score to run but more advanced scores would be in place for high-risk apps such as banking apps or anything involving secure data.
"We have a phone, and these phones have all these sensors in them," said Daniel Kaufman at Google's I/O conference.
"Why couldn't it just know who i was, so I don't need a password? It should just be able to work." Kaufman is head of Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group, who is responsible for experiments within the company.
Google isn't the only company that has tried to introduce alternative methods of accessing data.
In April 2015, PayPal outlined a range of "biometric" solutions – passwords you can swallow, for example, or technology that embeds under the skin, while start-up Chaotic Moon told WIRED UK last year that under-the-skin 'biotech tattoos' could be used to replace passwords. TalkTalk has also ditched passwords in favour of voice recognition.
Rutgers University recently suggested, in a study published in March, that "free-form gesture passwords" which allow users to draw their passwords would increase security as they have a "far greater number of combinations and variants".
Google said it will begin testing the Trust API next month with "large financial institutions" and hopes to have fully rolled out the system on Android phones by 2017.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
