Almost every website you visit these days lets you create an account of some sort to personalize your experience. Remembering all those username/password combos can get tedious and lead to weak, reused passwords that jeopardize your security. Enter Dynahand, a new form of online authentication that requires you to identify your own handwriting from a group instead of typing in a password. But is it worth it? I don't buy it.
The main purpose of the Dynahand system is to alleviate the burden of multiple passwords on your brain, thus simplifying your life. But in order to maintain security, you'll want to set up the system to test you multiple times before each login, a task that no doubt becomes more monotonous than entering a password. Dynahand uses numeric digits and complex handwriting analysis to create your unique written fingerprint, but the developer admits it probably isn't suited for protecting sensitive information like bank accounts.
So is it much ado about nothing? Do you really need to complicate the process for accessing social sites like MySpace and Facebook? Even feasibility is still a concern, as the current method for collecting user handwriting samples is labor-intensive on the provider of the equation. We'll keep an eye out for this approach taking off in the future, but don't buy a ticket just yet.