All of us have a lot of passwords we use daily, for tons of different online applications and services. As people have been required to stay at home during the pandemic, this number has increased as people have accessed even more online entertainment and services in order to fill their time.
People often use the same password for different online applications, thus increasing the risk of a security breach. Over 60% of Americans admit to using the same password across multiple sites. According to a Kaspersky Lab study, “59% of people fail to store their passwords securely, 63% use “easy-to-guess” passwords.”
So, there is no denying the problem. Interestingly, in 2020, popular searches like “how strong is my password” increased threefold. Passwords are potentially the single biggest threat to online security since they’re relatively easy to steal, hard to remember, and difficult to manage. They are a clear and present personal online security danger. In an effort to tackle the problem, password management apps have stepped in to fill the void, however, a massive security attack could cause millions of users to have to change all of their passwords, creating a nightmare. In the case of the Heartbleed attack in 2011, it left millions ‘bleeding’. One Canadian company—Liquid Avatar Technologies— has an elegant and efficient solution to the problem. Moreover, the technology they offer may potentially render passwords altogether obsolete.
The proprietary technology is available through the Liquid Avatar Mobile App, and, true to its name, it gives its users the power to control and manage their online identity. Liquid Avatar Technologies has created a universal utility that puts users in control of their credentials via a single utility application. Based on biometrics – facial recognition, and in the future voice, fingerprinting, and other unique individually identifying factors — together with blockchain technology as the foundation for verifiable credentials, the Liquid Avatar Mobile App is a self-sovereign identity platform available in the App Store and Google Play. User data is accessed biometrically through a user-controlled cloud-based digital wallet and the wallet holder decides what information they would like to release or exchange with different parties. Storing it on the cloud ensures that if your device is lost, damaged, or compromised, your data is not lost. The data is controlled by you, and Liquid Avatar never sells or rents data.
Using biometrics and the Liquid Avatar Mobile App, users create icons, a.k.a. personas, that the user is free to use for interaction with platforms such as e-commerce, payment systems, online gaming, etc. Moreover, their product offers personalized identity solutions that people can also share with government agencies, healthcare institutions, and education organizations.
While passwords can be hacked, Liquid Avatar credentials are impenetrable because the biometric technology that it is based on, sometimes called natural body identification, is significantly safer than storing passwords in a file, on a piece of paper, or by memory. It is impossible to imagine a hacker mimicking your heartbeat or fake voice patterns of one’s speech that are unique.
So, instead of entering the password, Liquid Avatar technology users will have to present their customized digital persona, the Avatar they create themselves for specific interaction with an online service provider, an e-commerce platform, a financial institution, a government agency, or other services along with an identity-enabled verifiable credential. As a result, using Liquid Avatar can potentially reduce the risk of hacking, theft of personal data, and make the digital world safer.
