What if all you needed to do to verify your identity online was type your name? Forget rummaging around to find your ID or bank statement. This is the idea behind a JavaScript-based identity-detection system developed by information-systems professors at BYU.
Typing your own name feels different than typing a stolen name, explains coauthor David W. Wilson (BS ’10, MISM ’10). “Our motor movements and our cognitive abilities are very intimately linked,” he says. As this technology runs in the background of web applications, user identities can be verified merely by analyzing their unique keystroke patterns, avoiding bothersome document verification while also fighting fraud.
