--Originally published at Stories by Dennis Kingston on Medium

Since Apple first released a fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5s, there have been a lot more smartphones that have released this feature such as Sony and Huawei amongst others.

Most people would think that this feature is very safe, because no one else has the same fingerprints as yours. But the reality is that the scanner isn’t as good as you would think. There are researchers who have developed “master fingerprints” capable of tricking the sensors.

The researchers were able to unlock phones, log in to apps and make payments using fake fingerprints created by using patterns found across many real prints. The researchers were able to create a set of “master prints that could fool a scanner up to 65 per cent of the time.

All in all, it is better to get a two factor authentication when you make payments in order to have more confidence that you can’t be faked easily. This types of authentications, clearly make it more difficult for malware to bypass your security credentials.