Judging age with bone scans
i-mature claims to have some new technology that can identify the age group of the user by a quick, cheap, painless bone density/composition scan.
http://www.i-mature.net/index.php
http://www.rsasecurity.com/press_release.asp?doc_id=5497
They have the cheesiest marketing video I’ve ever seen:
http://www.i-mature.net/content.php?id=30
Even if this works, it’s still pretty brittle.
For example, while it may act as a deterrent to help keep pedophiles out of chat rooms, it seems like would not be that hard for a pedophile (especially a criminal one) to find a child to use for this. In that case, this technology is dangerous – it increases the sense of security without actually providing more security, and the local effects are much much worse.
And that’s assuming that you can’t just stick another device (or bot) in the middle and spoof a valid authentication in the first place. Hopefully, this device isn’t meant to stand alone, but be combined with other technologies to ensure that the person being authenticated is actually present at the time, as well as actually being alive. Security is morbid sometimes, but it would be useful to know if the device is fooled by a dismembered finger.
As a technology to keep kids out of adult areas, it would fare a little better, I think.
