3 ms·

Basically anyone who washes their hands frequently (ie all medical personnel, food handlers, etc.) or does manual work with ungloved hands (including home garde

Basically anyone who washes their hands frequently (ie all medical personnel, food handlers, etc.) or does manual work with ungloved hands (including home gardening) can later in life have fingerprints so abraded as to be unidentifiable. Using a lot of hand lotion, as anyone with dry hands might, also tends to flatten the ridges. Any requirement for fingerprints as a biometric can render systems inaccessible for entire classes of people - it's a growing problem in banking for the elderly, for example.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>Using a lot of hand lotion, as anyone with dry hands might, also tends to flatten the ridges. so, several years of corona may in the future have the side effect of many more people without finger prints.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Yes, yes... corona. That's why all the lotion! It has nothing to do with looking at pron!
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    Curiously, the association of hand lotion with male masturbation is strongly culturally dependant — or rather, it is seemingly exclusively a US thing apparently because of the (dwindling) prevalence of male circumcision without the orthodox religious framework that usually accompanies it (and which seems to either banish or hide this feature in those cultural settings). Cum-socks, curiously stiffened towels, copious supplies of paper towels, and sticky sheets: these are all familiar to parents of teenage boys worldwide, but the lotion thing? It's an established trope in films and series, which is why people outside of the US 'get it', but the actual practice seems as localized as eating a Vegemite sandwich.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  I feel compelled to point out that hand lotion and hand sanitizer are not the same thing. However excessive use of hand sanitizer might have a similar effect on our fingerprints, for all I know.
discreteevent 5y ago
Not even later in life. I spent a couple of weeks working with concrete blocks at home and I was unable to get into my workplace via the fingerprint scanner. (My fingerprints restored themselves a couple of weeks later).
Arrath 5y ago
My father has this problem. The last time he went for a background check they tried time and time again with an electronic scanner but it just could not get a legible scan. After far too many unsuccessful attempts they pulled out the old ink roller and fingerprint card and called it a day with the first crack at it. At least the authorities had this option, what will happen when/if electronically scanned fingerprints are set as a hard requirement?
atoav 5y ago
Well and fingerprints also require hands. Not having hands is not as uncommon as one might think.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>Using a lot of hand lotion, as anyone with dry hands might, also tends to flatten the ridges. so, several years of corona may in the future have the side effect of many more people without finger prints.

bbarnett 5y ago
Yes, yes... corona. That's why all the lotion! It has nothing to do with looking at pron!
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Curiously, the association of hand lotion with male masturbation is strongly culturally dependant — or rather, it is seemingly exclusively a US thing apparently because of the (dwindling) prevalence of male circumcision without the orthodox religious framework that usually accompanies it (and which seems to either banish or hide this feature in those cultural settings). Cum-socks, curiously stiffened towels, copious supplies of paper towels, and sticky sheets: these are all familiar to parents of teenage boys worldwide, but the lotion thing? It's an established trope in films and series, which is why people outside of the US 'get it', but the actual practice seems as localized as eating a Vegemite sandwich.
bluefirebrand 5y ago
I feel compelled to point out that hand lotion and hand sanitizer are not the same thing. However excessive use of hand sanitizer might have a similar effect on our fingerprints, for all I know.

discreteevent 5y ago

Not even later in life. I spent a couple of weeks working with concrete blocks at home and I was unable to get into my workplace via the fingerprint scanner. (My fingerprints restored themselves a couple of weeks later).

Arrath 5y ago

My father has this problem. The last time he went for a background check they tried time and time again with an electronic scanner but it just could not get a legible scan. After far too many unsuccessful attempts they pulled out the old ink roller and fingerprint card and called it a day with the first crack at it. At least the authorities had this option, what will happen when/if electronically scanned fingerprints are set as a hard requirement?

atoav 5y ago

Well and fingerprints also require hands. Not having hands is not as uncommon as one might think.