Walt Disney World now requiring finger scans for child admissions to combat fraud

Maybe they saw this video. :-)

They reported this on our news the other night (ABC 5/Cleveland) and the tone of the report seemed to suggest that something very dire is in store for our dear children if we put them through this...

I don't know about your kids, but mine love doing the magic band scan, and if they actually get to do the fingerprint scan it only makes Disney one tick cooler for them.

My kids loved the magic bands and scanning too. They were disappointed when they didn't get to do the fingerprint scan when we visited this summer. I'm definitely for fingerprinting everyone. Disney isn't going to do anything nefarious with my kids' prints.

But whoever hacks their system might.

This is what Six Flags has to say about biometrics:

Six Flags uses what is called a “biometric pass” to secure access into our parks. We take a scan of your finger to link your card to your unique number. The scan of your finger does not contain enough information to recreate your fingerprint. When you arrive at the park, you’ll simply scan your finger to make sure it matches the record in our system and be on your way.

This is the same with all commercially used biometric systems. Even if someone hacked the system, there is no data present that could be used to forge your fingerprint. May I suggest Youtube as a great source of information on this subject.

Captain Hawkeye said:

But whoever hacks their system might.

You fundamentally misunderstand what this is. It's not a fingerprint. The scanner measures the geometry of your finger and then applies a hashing algorithm to it. Hashes don't mean anything because you can't derive any data from them. Your password for this site, and probably everywhere on the Internet, has similar techniques applied in that the data stored doesn't mean anything. It works because taking the source data, in this case the geometry, and hashing it, matches what they have in their database. Even if you could reverse the hash, the data wouldn't be detailed enough to be useful to anyone.

My kid was pretty excited that he needed to use it. He's 6, so he's been in the not grownup but not a free admission toddler for about three years. I don't care, but then, I worked with an actual theme park admission system that did essentially the same thing, so I get why it doesn't matter.

But why are three year old children committing fraud in the first place? Kids these days, I tell ya....

That's what I was thinking.

Y'all must not have met many three year olds. They are crafty SOBs.

I know kindergartners that would be felons right now if they were tried as adults.