remains on its quest to replace passwords with something more secure. The latest effort is from the company’s oject Abacus, which favors a system of biometrics to authenticate identity. 

The head of ’s ATA(Advanced Technology ojects) unit iel Kaufman offered some additional details during a late Friday session at I/O. The concept is that users would be able to unlock devices or sign into apps based on a “Trust Score” derived from their usage patterns. This could include speech voice similarities, facial recognition, typing methods, even ’s smart clothing effort oject cquard. This would create a “Trust Score” that would open the gates to the app for those who pass the authentication test.

l of this would factor into a Trust A that developers could then implement into their apps to authenticate one’s identity. The goal, according to Kaufman, is to make the capabilities available to Android developers by the end of the year. The threshold required for a trust score could be set by the developer, with a higher point total needed for something like your banking application.

oject Abacus is already in trial with 33 universities, banks will begin testing it out next month.

y this matters: really doesn’t like passwords. The company’s Smart ck is one stab at getting rid of them; it creates an automatic login for apps through your credentials, though it hasn’t been implemented that widely. ile much of this is probably the right direction for a more secure future, your best bet in the near-term is probably to go with a password manager.