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Britons are more relaxed about undergoing fingerprint or iris scans to verify their identity than their European neighbours, a survey of public attitudes has claimed. As many as 75% of UK citizens would be willing to submit to biometric checks when dealing with banks or the government, according to the study by Unisys, the technology company. Mounting concern about ID theft is, it appears, smoothing the way for popular acceptance of the technology.
The survey suggests that civil liberty concerns about the security of public databases and the way they accumulate information on individuals are not widely shared. According to the survey, 75% of UK residents would be willing to allow banks, government agencies and other organisations to take their fingerprints to verify their identity. In France, 59% were willing to comply with a similar request. For Germany the figure was 62% and in Italy it was 63%.
Meanwhile, the security of computers has slipped down the list of national concerns. Only 35% of UK residents said they were extremely or very concerned with the security of online transactions, by viruses or by unsolicited email. What most concerns people, says the twice-yearly Unisys Security Index report, is the potential misuse of debit or credit card information.
The survey, based on a poll of 976 adults in the UK and a total of more than 12,000 people in 13 countries, gives an insight into attitudes to a variety of biometric technologies, including fingerprint scans, iris scans, facial recognition checks and systems that record the individual's unique pattern of blood vessels. There has been significant opposition to the introduction of biometric technology - led, in particular, by the civil liberties group NO2ID, which has raised concerns about the reliability of the technology as well as concerns that people could find themselves under pressure to supply biometric data such as fingerprints.
Neil Fisher, of Unisys, says: "UK consumers are understandably becomingly increasingly concerned about the security of their personal information. Banks and government organisations need to do all that they can to protect UK consumers, but they need to consider the attitudes of their customers when implementing biometric and other security technologies as a means of protecting them."
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