When EARS Speak!!!

1. Do you any of the following :

(a) That your ears make sound?

(b) That these are know as otoacoustic emissions?

(c) That this has a biometric angle?

(d) That any two persons always have different otoacoustic emissions?

2. I am sure most of you don't because the exploitation of this fact has been recently discovered.Although it has been known from quite some time, that our ear makes sounds of its own, sometimes due to a scientific principle called otoacoustic emissions1, other times in protest to the loud music we listen to. In either case, the sounds are too weak to detect using normal microphones.Although scientists knew about these sounds since the 1940s, it was only with improvements in microphone technology in the 1970s, that it became possible to detect these otoacoustic emissions (OAE).

3. Recently though it has been suggested that such sounds may in-fact be used for biometric security devices of tomorrow. The variations in each person's OAE can be used as a metric for determining one's identity. The technology is as simple as a microphone!

4. A good enough microphone embedded in any device can be used to detect these sounds, and accordingly confirm ones identity, and be eventually used by banks to confirm the identity of a person over the phone, or by the phones themselves before they allow someone to make a call!

5. So for example,as on date when u speak to a customer service at a bank...u r supposed to tell you DOB,Phone number or street address for verification before you actually demand a solution to your account query...not so will be required in near future...wherein your phone set will be able to detecty the sound in your ear and verify your identity...nothing to memorise....plain simple unique identification.

6. Otoacoustic emissions can be clinically important as they are the basis of a simple, non-invasive, test for hearing defects in newborn babies and in children who are too young to cooperate in conventional hearing tests.

7. The good thing is that dead people do not emanate otoacoustic emissions.So unlike Hollywood movies...wherein a cut thumb or extracted eye have broken the identity procedures...this one won't....