Think of it like this. We can oversimplify what Apple is doing with Touch ID. Let's say when you scan your fingerprint Apple breaks it down into three key prop

Think of it like this. We can oversimplify what Apple is doing with Touch ID. Let's say when you scan your fingerprint Apple breaks it down into three key properties, A B and C. Each fingerprint has a different percentage for A B and C. So yours might read as A 50% B 30% C 0% This data is then cryptographically hashed with some unique identifier inside the phone (so the same data would store differently on every iPhone). The data is then irreversibly transformed into a different representation. You can't retrieve the unique properties of the fingerprint, nor can you retrieve the fingerprint itself. In the linked article, Apple states that the probability of two fingerprints matching in Touch ID is 1 in 50,000. So that just means that their algorithm for breaking fingerprints down into key features discards enough information that it is possible to read two different human fingerprints as the same fingerprint.