Typing in passwords could be a thing of the past, thanks to technology that can read your thoughts. A new discovery brings cognitive biometrics very close to reality. In cognitive biometrics, the response of your nervous system to a stimulus is measured, then used to identify you. A series of letters or images are flashed up on a screen and your P300 wave – a type of electrical activity in the brain – is measured using electrodes attached to your head. When a pre-defined word, letter or image is shown, recognition by the user generates their signature, P300 wave. Until now, users have been shown different letters or symbols in different parts of a screen. But tests at the universities of Essex and Wolverhampton have found that the system identifies individuals most accurately if all characters appear in the same location. This also reduces the chances of criminals spotting the brain word by tracking eye movement. As there is no keyboard involved, it is much harder for someone intent on fraud to get access to a password. “You still have to keep your password secure,” says Dr. Palani Ramaswamy. “It’s just that the way of entering the password is more resistant to fraud.” Accuracy still needs to be improved before cognitive biometrics can come into mainstream use. “Once accuracy is close to 100 percent, it can be used for high-security military applications and financial transactions as well,” he maintains.