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November 8, 2001 Personal Technology Sophisticated Security Technology Now Works With Individual's PCs By WALTER S. MOSSBERG PUBLIC INTEREST IN increased security has surged since Sept. 11, and one of the most talked-about solutions for securing both buildings and computers is called biometrics. That's the practice of identifying people based on computerized recognition of unique physical features such as finger and hand prints, retinas and even whole faces. Hollywood depicts such systems all the time in spy movies, and they seem to work effortlessly. But that's make-believe. To get a feel for how biometrics might work in the real world, I've been testing a new fingerprint-recognition system for home computers called U.are.U Personal, from a Silicon Valley company, DigitalPersona. The $69 system, sold directly on the company's Web site (www.digitalpersona.com1), includes some of the same highly sophisticated technologies that might be installed to guard airports or vast computer networks. Fingerprint-recognition systems for PCs aren't new, but nearly all have been meant for corporations and government agencies. By contrast, U.are.U Personal is squarely aimed at consumers and very small businesses. It's designed to work with PCs running Microsoft's new Windows XP operating system, mostly because XP was built to support multiple users, each with his or her own profile and password. IN WINDOWS XP, you can establish separate computer personalities for each user. Each can have a particular desktop arrangement, Web favorites, document folders and so forth. And you can quickly switch from user to user without requiring a complete logout and shutdown of running programs. U.are.U Personal consists of a small, gray two-inch-square module with an oval glass window on top and a red light glowing from within. It sits on your desk and connects to your PC via a USB port. There's also a software program to train and configure the module. Once you've installed it, and taken a few minutes to teach it to recognize your fingerprint, you can log into your individual Windows XP profile by just touching the oval window. If you sit down at the PC and somebody else is logged on, touching the module will instantly switch from the other person's profile to yours. My wife and I each taught the device our fingerprints -- including a backup finger on the other hand in case we had to wear a bandage or something. U.are.U Personal worked fine at logging us in and switching between our profiles quickly. It was very fast and accurate, recognizing our prints even if we touched the window at an odd angle. If that was all the product did, however, I'd call it a waste of money. After all, how hard is it to recall and type in a single password for your home PC? But U.are.U Personal does much more. It can allow you to replace all of the myriad passwords you use at Web sites with a touch of your finger on the sensor. You just set up the device to recognize your favorite Web sites and it will automatically fill in the user ID and password in the right places when you touch your finger to the oval. U.are.U Personal THIS SOLVES A huge problem. Veteran Web users typically have 20-30 user IDs and passwords at various Web sites, and can't keep them all straight. So, these folks resort to several insecure methods -- writing the IDs and passwords on scraps of paper taped to the PC, using the same ID and password everywhere, or letting sites record the ID information in "cookie" files on the PC. I tested U.are.U Personal at half a dozen password-protected Web sites, including Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and my bank. In each case, I first typed the user ID and password into the software that controls the fingerprint module, then indicated the corresponding line on the Web page. After that, every time, a simple touch of my finger was all that was needed to sign me in. You can even configure the gadget to perform a virtual press of the "enter" key after it fills out the ID and password at a Web site. This feature worked fine for me, except at my bank's site. U.are.U Personal has another useful function as well. It can encrypt any file or folder on your PC so that the file can only be read if your personal fingerprint is detected on the module. This is designed to let you hide files from others who use the PC, or hackers who might break in. You can only encrypt files when logged onto your own profile, and the product comes with a file-recovery program you can use if the module is broken or removed from the PC. E-mail me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Read these columns online at http://ptech.wsj.com3.Sign up to receive an e-mail alert4 when Personal Technology is published. I had two problems with U.are.U Personal, and I can't recommend it wholeheartedly until the company fixes them. The worst problem was that, in my tests, the module simply quit working after I installed a new keyboard and mouse. I had to reinstall and reconfigure it, which was a pain. Also, the configuration software was unnecessarily complicated in some places. It requires you to set up a "profile" for each Web page you want to enter, but never really explains what a profile is and hides the commands for editing the profiles if you want to change them later. So, U.are.U Personal isn't perfect, and it isn't for everyone. But it was highly accurate, and for those desperate to stop juggling a million passwords, it could be a real boon. * For answers to questions about logging out of Hotmail, noise-canceling headphones and speech-recognition software, check out my Mossberg's Mailbox5 column in Tech Center. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ URL for this Article: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1005172330856003280.djm Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) http://www.digitalpersona.com/ (2) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (3) http://ptech.wsj.com (4) http://interactive.wsj.com/user-cgi-bin/searchUser.pl?action=emailalert (5) http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1005171262501468360.djm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printing, distribution, and use of this material is governed by your Subscription Agreement and copyright laws. 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