In Wake of Reported Email Hack, Netease Promises Facial Recognition Login

This is just my own mockup of how Netease's system might look...

In response to a worrying wave of online account hacking in China in the past week, the web giant Netease (NASDAQ:NTES) has said that it’ll implement webcam-powered facial recognition logins to its 163 and 126.com email services. That’ll come, the company says, in the first half of next year; it also promises that the upcoming system will not fail to recognise users, and that it cannot be fooled by showing a photo.

It’s a nice idea, but it remains to be seen if it will be useful, or a mere gimmick. Presumably, a conventional password is still needed as a backup – and for other methods of email access, such as IMAP on smartphones – and so there’s still a risk of having one’s login credentials exposed when there’s a malicious leak of data. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the dangers of evil identical twins. So, colour us skeptical for the time being.

Security breaches this week have hit Netease’s mail itself – both of which are among China’s top web-mail providers – as well as various e-commerce firms and social media.

Facial recognition has been rolled out to ordinary consumers in a handful of computer manufacturer’s custom login systems, and was recently implemented into the latest version of Android 4.0, Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) mobile OS. On Android, that recognition system is still backed-up by either a PIN number or on-screen pattern.

Google’s Gmail earlier this year took a different approach to security – and one which works across both desktop and mobile. It’s called two-step authentication, and requires users to generate an extra code in an app each time they log-in to to Gmail in an unfamiliar device or location.

Hit the comments below if you’d like to share your own method of securing your numerous web logins.

[Source: China Business Media]