My Voice Is My Password

My bank here in the UK recently rolled out Voice ID, a system whereby you train their server with your voice, saying “My voice is my password” several times. I set this up yesterday for telephone banking, and went to try it out today.

It failed.

I instructed the bank to turn this off, and I won’t every bother to use it again. If a new technology fails the first time, there’s no reason to continue using it.

This is the problem with new technologies that don’t work optimally. My experience with Siri on iOS is so abysmal that I don’t even think of using it. My attempt to use Apple’s two-factor authentication led to much distress.

New, shiny technologies are cool, and look good in presentations, but they don’t always work in the real world. If they fail once, they’re dead forever for that user. You only get one try.