In the last five years or so, facial recognition has gone from sci-fi to a technology we use on a daily basis. This technological leaps and widespread adoption have made it an incredible tool for secure personal devices and find long lost friends on social media. However, in the wrong hands, this personal data that secures our devices could also lead to unwanted complications.
IDville’s Temperature Screening Terminals feature facial matching capabilities, but how does it work, and are they safe?
How to does it work on this device?
The facial recognition camera and software are programmed to compare key features of the face including, but not limited to: eyes, brow, lips and jaw line. It scans the users face and compares it to the internally stored dataset of approved faces. In about one or two seconds, it will recognize you as a known and approved person. If it cannot find an approved face that matches yours, you will be considered a stranger.
How Accurate is it?
The manufacturer claims the live detection accuracy rate is 98.3% @ 0.1% false positive rate. Our experience shows that you will get the most accurate results if you take a picture directly from the terminal instead of uploading a photo.
In contrast, Apple’s Face ID uses advanced infrared imaging and mapped infrared dots to authenticate the user. They claimed it had a 1 in 50,000 false positive rating, or 0.00002%.
Some things can hinder the accuracy of the facial matching, such as face masks that cover the full bottom half of the face, glasses or in rare cases hair color changes.
One important safety feature to note is that a picture of someone cannot be used to gain access. This is partially due to having to read a valid temperature.
Can a stranger match to an approved employee?
If you upload pictures to match employees to, it is possible, but not probable, that a stranger could match as an approved employee. Because of this potential security threat, we do not recommend you rely solely on this device to regulate highly restricted access areas. We are working on a solution for this but overall, the facial matching works pretty well. Remember that this is not the primary feature of the temperature terminal. You can read how accurate the Temperature Screening Terminal is at taking temperatures, if you are interested.
Is My Data Secure?
Personal data like face, temperature, and work schedule are sensitive pieces of information and should not be willingly shared with external databases. The data captured on this device is saved only on the unit the data was captured with. The only way it is available is a downloadable file after the admin signs in via password protection.
