Samsung Galaxy S5: Report 'confirms' fingerprint scanner

A new report that the company's next flagship handset, due to be unveiled on February 24, is to support biometric authentication.

This is seen as good news for all consumers.

Like the iPhone 5S, the next Samsung Galaxy S is set to feature a fingerprint scanner embedded in its homekey according to a report on SamMobile, however the source suggests that, unlike with Apple's Touch ID, Samsung's sensor will be able to recognize up to eight of the user's fingers.

That means that touching the button with different fingers would trigger different commands or launch different apps.

It's easy to write these sorts of features off as little more than gimmicks, but Samsung's adoption of biometric authentication is an important step towards boosting online security for all consumers as the traditional text-based password has been proven to offer inadequate protection against cybercrime and hackers.

SplashData's latest list of most common cracked passwords, published in January, shows that despite the increased risks of digital identity theft and other online risks, the most common passwords used by consumers for logging into web services are ‘123456', ‘password', and ‘12345678'.

Choosing a password that's easy to guess is one bad, but then using that same easy-to-guess sign in on multiple sites is potentially terrible. For example, earlier this month, UK supermarket Tesco suspended over 2000 online accounts to protect customers.

Not because the company had been hacked, but because passwords and emails recovered from a hack on another site had then been entered into the Tesco site and hackers had managed to open 2000 accounts without breaking one law.

Online crowdfunding site Kickstarter was also hacked this month, and although members' credit card details weren't accessed, hackers did come away with email addresses, telephone numbers, passwords and in some cases physical addresses.

The only way that consumers can limit the damage from these sorts of attacks is to ensure they have a very strong and very different password for every web service they use.

However, as most consumers use several social media sites, a web-based email account, online banking, an online retailer such as Amazon or eBay at the very minimum, that can mean creating and remembering on average 11 different passwords.

No wonder that according to research by Nuance that 85 percent of US consumers admit to reusing the same password on multiple sites.

Unlike a text-based password, a biometric marker such as voice, fingerprint, retina scan or even body odor is truly unique and is impossible to forget. And, as Samsung looks to be set to follow Apple's lead, other device makers will likely follow, meaning that within one or two years the text-based password will have disappeared.