That's true. It all boils down to whether you have more information than the adversary. By default, you have both a password and a biometric; with the biotoken

That's true. It all boils down to whether you have more information than the adversary. By default, you have both a password and a biometric; with the biotoken strategy, authentication requires both. If you lose your password (eg. password database being compromised, doesn't require local access), only your biometric can protect you. With biotokens, the idea is that if the biotoken fingerprint database is compromised, the adversary can't get any useful representation of your fingerprint, even if they have your password. Sure, as you say, you can lose your fingerprint if your attacker tails you at the coffee shop to lift it from the glass table or your discarded coffee mug ("local access"). But now the adversary has all the information that you do -- your password and your biometric -- so you're doomed no matter what. Boult and Scheirer, the author of the above paper, gave a great tutorial about these kinds of privacy/security issues at 2011's International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB), if you're interested about learning more. Both happen to be my former advisors too ;) Tutorial: http://www.securics.com/~walter/IJCB2011/ http://www.securics.com/~walter/IJCB2011/ Slides, "Part I: An Overview of Issues Related to Biometric Privacy and Security" http://www.securics.com/~walter/IJCB2011/IJCB11-tutorial-part1.pdf http://www.securics.com/~walter/IJCB2011/IJCB11-tutorial-par... "Part II: A Survey of Template Protection Technologies" http://www.securics.com/~walter/IJCB2011/ijcb-survey-templates.pdf http://www.securics.com/~walter/IJCB2011/ijcb-survey-templat...