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Technology Stocks : Identix (IDNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Night Writer who wrote (5752)	12/13/1997 1:09:00 AM
From: Arthur	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26039

THIS PEN CERTIFIES YOUR JOHN HANCOCK THE BIGGEST DRAG ON INTERNET commerce is security--there's no easy way, for example, to protect a credit-card number once it is punched into the Net. To help solve the security problem, LCI Computer Group in the Netherlands and Inter-University Micro Electronics Center in Belgium have jointly developed the SMARTpen. It looks like an ordinary pen, but inside, a proc-essor, battery, and transmitter can authenticate signatures. The SMARTpen measures angle and acceleration as it crosses paper and then transmits the information in code by radio signal to a host computer. When the user signs a piece of paper, the signature is compared with the original. Forgeries are almost impossible. ''Since everybody has their own unique signature, you don't have to trust a credit card anymore,'' says Sam Asseer, LCI's CEO. ''Even if someone copies another's signature, he would be writing at a different speed, so the computer would tell the difference.'' The SMARTpen now costs around $400, but Asseer predicts the price could fall to $40 once it goes into mass production. LCI is negotiating for the pen to be used for identification at U.S. government installations and with a consumer electronics company to license the product. businessweek.com