The Next Generation Apple Watch Could Identify Users by Their Heart Rate

this is just NOT possible. Your heart rate can change a lot in many normal and abnormal conditions. I call this BS.

this is just NOT possible. Your heart rate can change a lot in many normal and abnormal conditions. I call this BS.

What this sensor measures is how you blood vessels expand as a pressure pulse is travelling through your veins when the heart contracts. The blood pressure (and thus the size of the blood vessel) follows a periodic fluctuation not unlike a sine curve. The heart rate is given by only looking at the frequency of that periodic fluctuation. Studying the whole shape of the curve gives you much more information than just looking at the frequency.

http://dsn.sagepub.com/content/11/6/549134.full
http://www.inderscience.com/storage/f104531211967812.pdf
http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JIS20120100004_57389606.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4535678/

Is it that your holding off until the security parity between heartbeat signatures and fingerprints is closed, or do you honestly not believe it is a viable identification technique? The way I read you posts you seemed to dispute that heartbeat signatures are unique. Am I misreading your objection?

Troll trap! He's got you doing his research for you! Meanwhile he just sits back and armchair reacts to your posts. Is it so important to get this guy to agree with you that you have to do his work for him, given he's not intellectually curious enough to do it for himself?

That's deliciously clever technology. The Star Trek future gets ever closer.

You would be amazed at the technology our secret space programs keep from us. Stuff we already have, things us normal people won't ever get to experience.

That's deliciously clever technology. The Star Trek future gets ever closer.

No, my objection is that there is no way this currently works when scaled up to a decent population size, which is of course what would be required for this to be an identification technology.

Did you read those papers, or did you just quickly google, then cut n paste?

"..the majority of the studies have been conducted on a small population (about a few tens of subjects). Therefore, the applicability of ECG biometric recognition on a large scale (real life authentication scenario) it is not yet proven."

"..almost all studies (except for [17 ('https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4535678/#CR17')] and [31 ('https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4535678/#CR31')] ) ignored the variability of the ECG during life span (i.e. variability induced by work, ageing, iterate sport activity etc.); moreover, only few studies [57 ('https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4535678/#CR57'), 83 ('https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4535678/#CR83'), 136 ('https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4535678/#CR136')] considered the applicability of these techniques when subjects suffer from pathological conditions. ECG recognition in pathological subjects is another aspect worth of additional investigations."

"it must be emphasised that, while guidelines are available for ECG acquisition in the clinical scenario, there is still a lack of standardisation on ECG acquisition (number of leads and their positioning, sampling frequency, number of bits, filtering, type of electrodes, number of leads etc.) for biometrics applications. However, ECG databases for biometric recognition should ideally include recordings, at a given sampling frequency and conditions, from the same subjects in different circumstances (e.g. relaxed, during and after physical training) and along a period of several years."

And still no discussion of sensitivity and specificity.

Not even remotely close to being a practical and usable technology.

Except it's not.
It's nowhere near as individual as a fingerprint.
And fingerprints don't change moment-to-moment depending on your breathing, activity, and environment.

Yeah, something not adding up here...!

You don't understand micro palpitations do you? The way your heart operates doesn't change moment-to-moment.

https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/06/heartbeat-may-soon-password/

"
Yury: I didn’t realize that people’s heartbeats are different. Is the heartbeat really a reliable biometric?

D’Souza: Yes, it is! Everybody’s got a unique heartbeat. It’s based on the size and shape of your heart and the orientation of your valves, your physiology. It doesn’t change unless you have a major cardiac event like a heart attack.

Yury: What about when you’re nervous and your heart rate goes up? Will it still work?

D’Souza: Your heart can beat faster but electrically your beats look the same. So, whether it beats faster or slower, it doesn’t really matter. It’s really about the shape of the waves, and what that signal looks like when it comes off your heart.
"

Troll trap! He's got you doing his research for you! Meanwhile he just sits back and armchair reacts to your posts. Is it so important to get this guy to agree with you that you have to do his work for him, given he's not intellectually curious enough to do it for himself?

I'm waiting for a progress bar to go by at work and biometrics and research are areas of interest to me, so the 3 minutes of browsing I did was more to collect links for me to read up on later. ;)

AppleInsider ('http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/13/future-apple-watches-might-use-heart-rate-sensor-to-identify-owner-feature-wrist-gesture-control') notes that the system could replace Touch ID during Apple Pay payments and further reduce the watch's reliance on iPhone, although it's unclear if heart rate data can be a unique enough identifier to ensure the same level of security.

I see no way this reduces the watch's reliance on iPhone. Please explain.

this is just NOT possible. Your heart rate can change a lot in many normal and abnormal conditions. I call this BS.

But your heartbeat signature is unique. This isn't about heart rate, it's about the extremely minute differences in how every persons heart beats, it's as identifying as a fingerprint.