Tattoos, Pills Might Someday Replace Passwords

Fact: Passwords suck. So Motorola is looking into technology that will allow its phones to use "Biostamp" tattoos or computer chip pills to identify their owners instead, the company told the D11 conference this week. Executive Regina Dugan even showed off her own Biostamp, a bendable silicon chip originally developed for medical purposes by MC10, reports Help Net Security. She promised that the company wouldn't be put off by people who found the technology "creepy."

If Biostamps don't catch on, Motorola's also testing the Proteus Digital Health pill, which uses stomach acid to power a computer chip that produces a unique ECG trace, the Telegraph explains. The FDA already has approved it, as have European regulators. Motorola has "tested it authenticating a phone, and it works," the company's CEO said, though he admitted that neither experiment was terribly close to coming to market. The news makes sense, in light of parent company Google's professed interest in finding an alternative to passwords. (More Google stories.)