Latest news with #biometricdata
Fox News
7 days ago
- Health
- Fox News
Biometric iris scanning launches in US cities for digital identity
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, known for creating ChatGPT, has launched World, a project that uses an eye scan to prove you are a real person online. The idea is to help people stand out from bots and AI by creating a digital ID with a quick scan from a device called the Orb. While Altman says this technology keeps humans central as AI advances, it also raises serious concerns about privacy and the security of sensitive biometric data, with critics and regulators questioning how this information will be used and protected. World ID relies on a device called the Orb, a spherical scanner that captures a person's iris pattern to generate a unique IrisCode. It stores the code on a blockchain-based platform, ensuring that users can verify their identity without revealing personal details. Once scanned, individuals receive their World ID, which can be used for authentication across various platforms where the World ID protocol has been integrated, including Reddit, Telegram and Shopify. Additionally, those who sign up are rewarded with WLD cryptocurrency as an incentive. They get the equivalent of $40 worth of tokens, which they can spend, exchange or share with other World ID holders. World ID is currently available in Austin, Texas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Nashville, Tennessee, Miami and San Francisco, with plans to expand further. The company aims to deploy 7,500 Orb devices across the U.S. by the end of the year, targeting 180 million users. While the technology promises enhanced security, the debate over its privacy implications continues to grow. World ID has ambitious goals, but despite this, the project has faced significant backlash. Many people worry that storing eye scan data in a worldwide database could put their personal information at risk. Adding to the controversy, critics point out the irony of Sam Altman, whose company, OpenAI, contributes to the very AI challenges World ID aims to solve, being at the helm of this project. Governments in Spain, Argentina, Kenya and Hong Kong have either suspended or investigated the project due to concerns over excessive data collection. Furthermore, cybersecurity experts warn that once biometric data is linked to an identity system, it becomes irreversible, raising fears of potential surveillance. World ID helps prove that people online are real humans and not AI bots, something that is on the rise. In this AI-driven world, it can be an essential security measure to ensure the internet is a safer and more trustworthy place. Since the system is integrated with blockchain technology, it can definitely provide secure authentication across multiple platforms. However, the storage of sensitive biometric data in a global database will always raise concerns for many. Do you think the benefits of blockchain-based iris scanning technology outweigh its privacy implications? Let us know by writing us at For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Follow Kurt on his social channels: Answers to the most-asked CyberGuy questions: New from Kurt: Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
The major changes coming to the way Aussies travel to Europe in 2025 - what you need to know
Aussies planning a European vacation this year can expect to see a series of changes into the way they travel. New requirements such as fingerprinting and photographing upon arrival, as well as a new entry fee, are some of the new measures being rolled out across many European countries. Daily Mail Australia has put together a simple guide to help travellers stay informed and avoid any surprises before their next getaway. European Entry and Exit System A brand new European Entry and Exit System (EES) is set to be introduced in October this year. The EES will impact all non-European nationals, such as Australians, who are travelling in the Schengen Zone. The Schengen Zone is made up of 29 European countries that have removed internal border rules, which allows for visa-free travel between one another. It includes all 25 European Union member states, and four other countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. The EES is a digital border, which requires all non-EU travelers to be fingerprinted and photographed before they can enter the country. The biometric data will be used if travellers return within three years. An exact start date for the EES is not yet confirmed. Schengen Area Entry Rules Australians can travel visa-free in the Schengen Area for up to 90 days within a 180-day period for tourism, business, visiting family or friends, attending cultural or sports events, transit, official visits, medical treatment, short-term studies, or research. To enter, your passport must be valid for at least three months beyond your intended departure date from the Schengen Area. Aussies should be sure to get their passport stamped upon arrival in their first Schengen country. An unclear or missing stamp could result in fines or detention. In some countries, you may also need to register your stay within three days of arrival. For detailed entry and exit requirements for each Schengen country, check the Smart Traveller website Information on temporary border controls is available on the European Commission website. Note that non-Schengen countries have separate entry rules. You can find up-to-date information by contacting the relevant embassy, high commission, or consulate. When to get a Visa Anyone planning a stay longer than 90 days in the Schengen Zone will need a visa. Travellers will need to apply from outside the country, through the embassy, high commission, or consulate of the country where they'll spend the most time, or the first country they will enter from if the stay length is the same. Visa rules apply to Australian passport holders. Dual nationals should check entry requirements for their other nationality. Find foreign embassies and consulates in Australia on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) website. Changes coming in 2026 Starting in 2026, all visitors to Europe, including Australians, will need to apply for authorisation through the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) before entering. The ETIAS will cost the equivalent of $12 and will be valid for three years or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. Before entry is granted, travellers will undergo a security screening when visiting any participating European country.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Is All of This Self-Monitoring Making Us Paranoid?
Sarah Hills was worried about her heart. Her Oura Ring, a wearable device that tracks users' biometric data, including body temperature, heart rate and blood oxygen levels, was telling her something might be off. The ring provides some of its data in the form of scores, like a 'readiness' score that uses 'sleep quality, body signals, and activity levels to show how prepared you are to take on the day,' according to Oura. Since receiving the ring as a Christmas gift, Ms. Hills had begun to compulsively check her stats. If her scores weren't good, the 22-year-old said, she would ruminate. When her stats wobbled this year, she tried to see a doctor. When she couldn't get an appointment soon enough, Ms. Hills, a recent graduate of Providence College, and a friend drove to a pharmacy where she spent $50 on an at-home blood pressure cuff and monitor to put her mind at ease. 'At that point I was, like, 'Oh my gosh, this thing is literally destroying my mind,'' she said. Eventually, Ms. Hills was able to see a doctor who told her she was healthy. The doctor did have one recommendation: Consider ditching the ring. In the eternal human quest to know thyself, it's tempting to seize on every bit of information we can glean. If you could know, for instance, not just that you slept 6.5 hours last night but also that 12 percent of those hours were spent in REM sleep and that your overall 'sleep efficiency' — time asleep versus time awake — was 85 percent, as many pieces of wearable tech can tell you, why wouldn't you? At least that's the attitude of many people in our age of the quantified self, in which collecting sheaves of data about our bodies every day seems to hold the promise of bringing about a happier, healthier life. But what if all of that data is also heightening our stress? Is there a metric for that? While some Oura users say they enjoy the ring as a screen-free way to keep tabs on their bodies, several Oura owners, including Ms. Hills, described feeling increasingly anxious after using their devices. Rather than helping them feel more in control of their wellness, the data only made them fixate on potential — and often nonexistent — problems. You could call it Oura paranoia, though the phenomenon is hardly exclusive to any one product: As wearable health technology, including Apple Watches and Fitbits, have become more popular in recent years, some users have struggled with the unintended psychological side effects of the devices. Eli Rallo, a 26-year-old memoirist and content creator, said she was checking her heart rate '24/7' after receiving her ring as a gift in 2023. When she raised concerns about her seemingly elevated heart rate with a doctor during a routine checkup, she said she was told not to worry and that she was fine. 'They were like anti-Oura Ring,' said Ms. Rallo, who lives between Dallas and New York City. 'They were like, 'This is just not necessary information for a healthy, able-bodied person to have.''(Ms. Rallo noted that she has been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, which she said was not well managed at the time. She felt her condition was worsened by wearing her ring.) Eventually, a therapist recommended she stop using the device entirely. She took that advice. Hannah Muehl, a physician assistant and dietitian in Pittsburgh, Penn., said she found that the quantified knowledge that she wasn't sleeping well made it even harder for her to get rest. She purchased her ring after having a baby to track her sleepless nights nursing. 'It puts action behind things that should be innate, like reminding you to rest, reminding you sleep, all these things that shouldn't be innate practices,' Ms. Muehl said. 'Making them things that you're trying to hit as a goal — which inherently, if you're working hard toward resting, you're not actually resting." 'I just felt like I couldn't do anything right to make the ring happy,' said Abi Caswell, a bakery owner who lives in New Orleans. She got her ring a little over a year ago to use the device's temperature-tracking feature for family planning. She liked the idea of not having 'to remember to take out a thermometer every morning,' Ms. Caswell, 29, said. She described become disenchanted with the device while opening her second bakery location. It was an intense period for Ms. Caswell, and the ring's regular reminders reinforced what she already knew: 'My body was in maximum overdrive,' she said. Seeing that spelled out in data only exacerbated her negative feelings, like giving an upset person the wildly unhelpful advice that he or she should just calm down. 'It was stressing me out more thinking about how stressed I was,' Ms. Caswell said, 'and how I was not able to give my body and my health the attention that it needed.' Not long after the release of the first Fitbit in 2009, and the first Apple Watch in 2015, the potential hazards of technology so closely entwined with the body's natural processes became apparent. Over the last decade, many have spoken out about how wearable tech has worsened their eating disorders and led to other obsessive behavior. Still, the siren song of these devices remains strong for some people who might be better served by simply opting out of the latest smart watch or ring. 'There's just a lot of crises going on,' said Deborah Lupton, a sociologist and the author of 'The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking,' and people are eager to get their hands on any consumer product that promises them 'at least some control over some aspects of their everyday lives and their health and well-being.' (Though she noted that having access to such an expensive piece of technology — the latest model of the Oura Ring starts at $349 — was a privilege.) The proliferation of technology designed to track our biology can also make it easy to forget that human beings are pretty well equipped to do that on our own, said Jacqueline D. Wernimont, an associate professor at Dartmouth College in the film and media studies department who specializes in histories of quantification. Wearable technology 'takes the authority and knowledge out of the individual and places it in some third party, in a device that then the individual has to consult in order to try to decipher or understand her own body,' said Ms. Wernimont, who is the author of 'Numbered Lives: Life and Death in Quantum Media.' 'That in and of itself produces a kind of anxiety,' she added. Shyamal Patel, Oura's senior vice president of science, acknowledged that sometimes having access to so much data can be stressful for some users, including himself. Occasionally, he said, he take breaks from wearing his ring if he is feeling overwhelmed. 'I think it's on us as individuals and users and how we actually leverage this technology so the technology is serving us not the other way around,' Mr. Patel said. He also stressed that users should take care not to compare their biometric data with others'. Some have found that difficult, particularly as social media has amplified stories of people who they say their wearable tech tipped them off to serious medical conditions. 'I knew that I had cancer before I was diagnosed because of my Oura Ring,' Nikki Gooding, a 27-year-old nurse practitioner in Richmond, Va., said in a widely shared TikTok in March. Hunter Woodhall, a Paralympic track star, said his Oura Ring 'may have saved my life' after it helped him seek treatment for appendicitis. Ms. Gooding, who was later diagnosed with Lymphoma, explained how the ring's daily updates alerted her to 'major signs of some sort of physical stress.' Her temperature was consistently higher than usual, she said in an interview. 'Please don't let this scare you!!,' Ms. Gooding later wrote in a comment on her video, acknowledging a number of people who said Ms. Gooding's story was the reason they could never wear an Oura Ring. 'I deal with a lot of patients who do have health anxiety, so I understood,' Ms. Gooding said. These days, Ms. Muehl, the physician assistant in Pittsburgh, said she has taken off her ring for good. She's back to using an old-school pedometer to track her steps. Ms. Caswell, the bakery owner, is still wearing hers. She said she checks it only twice a day. Ms. Hills abandoned the blood pressure monitor at her parents' house. She still sleeps in her ring a few nights a week. Ms. Wernimont, the Dartmouth professor, said she regularly has classroom discussions with students who are overly reliant on their quantified experience, focusing closely on data and trusting those metrics over their own firsthand experiences and physical sensations. 'They're like, 'The device said …' or 'The monitor said …,' and I'm like, 'But what did your body say?''
Telegraph
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Britons will have fingerprints taken at EU border despite Starmer's deal
Britons travelling to European Union countries will still have to have their fingerprints and a mug shot taken at the border after the reset deal brokered by Sir Keir Starmer. While the agreement means UK citizens will now be able to use passport e-gates at EU airports, a push by Brussels to more closely monitor all arrivals into the bloc remains unaffected. Starting later this year, so-called 'third country nationals' entering the 29-nation Schengen zone will need to provide biometric data under the so-called Entry/Exit System (EES). Fingerprints and a photograph will be taken on touchdown at European airports, or before departing London on a Eurostar train or taking a ferry from Dover. Some reports have suggested that one or the other may be acceptable. The long-delayed programme is expected to be rolled out from October, leading to concerns about disruption during half-term as Britons unaware of the changes fly off on European breaks. The EES will digitise travel records, identifying visitors who overstay and, the EU claims, boosting border security. Data will be kept on file for three years, with anyone refusing to supply it denied entry. Mark Tanzer, the chief executive of Abta, the trade body for travel agents, said: 'The agreements around e-gates and pet passports will make it easier for travellers, cutting down on queues and pre-holiday admin. 'There are of course more border changes coming down the line, including the EU Entry/Exit System planned for October. It is vital we continue to see good cooperation between the UK and EU on the introduction of this scheme, to make it as streamlined as possible for UK travellers.' What will the UK-EU deal mean when you travel? Queues at airports in the EU should be shorter as Britons holding e-gate compatible passports will now be permitted to use barriers that have been closed to them since Brexit. There will be no more waiting in line at manned booths while border officials scrutinise the paperwork of the ranks of arrivals from around the world. However, that will only be possible once the requirements of the EES scheme have been met. It has been argued that, beyond the initial rigmarole of registering, the scheme will speed up entry and exit from the bloc. What will wider use of e-gates mean for industry? The 'reset' agreement will not directly affect UK airports, but should ease pressure at European airports and border points with e-gates, particularly in locations popular with holidaying Britons. The requirement for the additional infrastructure for the EES still stands, meaning companies that have invested in new booths and technology will not have done so in vain. Eurostar has spent millions on biometric kiosks at St Pancras station, where French border officials check passports before people board trains, while Dover has similarly reordered its waiting areas so that people can supply fingerprints and photos via tablets from their cars. Will the deal boost travel? Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary said the 'reset' deal is unlikely to make any difference in passenger numbers, with Britons already booking holidays in Spain, Greece and Italy in high numbers this summer. Still, he said the change should have a positive impact for Britons negotiating European airports and 'will certainly reduce friction at the borders.' Is there a reciprocal agreement? Arrivals from the EU are already permitted to use e-gates at Heathrow. The airport allowed this after judging that reducing pressure on Border Force officials ultimately outweighed any consideration of tit-for-tat restrictions.
News.com.au
19-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Students' biometric data collected by Microsoft Teams ‘for weeks', NSW Education ‘unaware'
A data stuff-up has resulted in the biometric data of NSW school students being collected by Microsoft Teams – with the Education Department not realising the issue 'for weeks'. A new feature that allowed biometric data to be collected through Microsoft Teams was rolled out by the tech giant in mid-March, and used on school-issued computers. But the department was not aware until early April – at which point they had the feature switched off. A Microsoft spokesperson told NewsWire individual biometric data was not accessible to anyone – reiterating it was encrypted and 'stored securely per our compliance and privacy standards'. Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car is looking into the incident. 'The Minister has asked for a full briefing on the incident from the Department,' a spokesperson told NewsWire. 'We want to assure parents and students that the function is now disabled and that no biometric data was held by the Department.' Any data collected during the weeks in which the feature was active has since been deleted, the department said. 'The Department of Education does not collect student biometric data,' a spokesperson said. 'A new Microsoft Teams feature that allowed voice and facial enrolment for people entering Teams meetings was quickly disabled across our network, and any face or voice recognition profiles that were created have been removed.' Shadow education minister Sarah Mitchell said there had been a 'complete breach of privacy and trust for every student and parent' in NSW. 'Not only do we not know how long the data was held, but we also have not been told what the data was used for while it existed,' she told NewsWire. 'What's even more concerning is the fact that it appears there are parents out there who are not even aware this occurred – and that is simply not good enough. 'We need to know exactly how many students have been caught up in this and who they are so they can be notified immediately. 'It's also scary that there's no indication of who had access to this sensitive data while it was available.'
