Technology is becoming cleverer and cleverer. Especially smartphone technology.

As more and more people hand over their lives to their mobile devices, hardware developers are searching for simple, secure ways to help you to identify yourselves. People don’t want to type in codes each time they use their phones (hundreds of times a day for most of us), so more and more phones use fingerprint scanners, facial recognition or iris scanners.

The manufacturers are helping to keep us safe.

To a point, but it could be seen as a flimsy sticking plaster when compared to how much they, and the associated ‘Apposphere’ are encouraging you to share more and more personal information with more and more companies.

Personally I don’t bother to check any more what permissions I am giving away when I download a new app. It’s too depressing. I just say ‘yes’.

Biometric technology is good and getting better but it isn’t totally secure. Iris scanners have been hacked, fingerprint scanners have been hacked and it seems that facial recognition is a bit of a joke.

Not easy for just anybody to do, but the frightening thing to remember is that you can’t change your physical characteristics. If, for any reason, your biometric data is compromised (and published online?), you can’t just change your fingerprints like a password. What happens then?

If you want to understand better why you might want be worried, read my new novel, Best Eaten Cold.

It really could be you!