Russia intros self-service passport control

Russian citizens can by the end of the year enter Finland at the Vaalimaa border crossing point with the use of automatic control of identity and passports, reports Barents Observer.

The biometric passport control system has been tested at the Vaalimaa border crossing point between Finland and Russia for the last three months. So far, only Finns and EU citizens holding biometric passports can use the self-service.

In 2008, Russia started to issue biometric passports which contain a microchip for digital finger or retina prints in addition to a special photograph of the holder.

Continental Airlines has expanded its paperless boarding pass system to Heathrow, becoming the first carrier to offer the service on UK-US flights, says The Independent.

The airline says passengers will no longer need a paper printed pass and will instead be able to show their phone or PDA to security and check-in officials. Mobile boarding passes display a two-dimensional bar code along with passenger and flight information, which cannot be manipulated or duplicated.

"Customers have told us this is the type of product improvement they want, and we will continue to expand the self-service technology to more of our domestic and international destinations," says Continental's Martin Hand.

Voice biometrics doesn't receive the same level of attention as other modalities, but it has unique benefits the others cannot match. Chief among these is its ability to enable remote authentication over the telephone, writes ThirdFactor.

Mobile communications provider Vodafone Turkey rolled out its Voice Identification Service powered by the VocalPassword solution from PerSay.

The service makes a spoken pass phrase a universal identifier for customer support, enabling customers to avoid having to remember multiple PINs or undergo a cumbersome and costly manual authentication process. The system was integrated with Vodafone's Voice Portal Platform, enabling secure self-service applications such as GSM Personal Unlocking Key reset.