Get the latest tech news
Struggling to Unlock Your Phone? You Might Have Lost Your Fingerprints
The absence of these identifying marks—which can be the result of excessive typing, manual work, chemotherapy, or sports—is becoming more of an issue in the age of biometrics.
But this unique identifier made of ridges and furrows can fade or temporarily wear down—and an increasing number of people are finding out just how easy it is to lose their fingerprints, often with maddening consequences. That microtrauma could include gaming or typing, due to repeated pressure on the same area of the hands, but Haber says the real issue is irritant dermatitis, caused by chemicals in plastics and substances that we frequently touch. Coltyn Stone-Lamontagne, 23, is a computer science student in Manitoba, Canada, and has paid for his tuition for the past six years by spending summers planting trees to replace those destroyed by forest fires or cut down by the timber industry—planting about 3,000 of them a day.
Or read this on Wired
