"Touch ID does not store any images of your fingerprint. It stores only a mathematical representation of your fingerprint. It isn't possible for your actual fin

"Touch ID does not store any images of your fingerprint. It stores only a mathematical representation of your fingerprint. It isn't possible for your actual fingerprint image to be reverse-engineered from this mathematical representation." This is a tad disingenuous. Fingerprint 101: Fingerprint databases don't search images of your fingerprints. They search mathematical representations of your fingerprints. To uniquely identify your fingerprint an image is scanned for unique features called "minutia points"[1]. The spacing and orientation of those points is what is stored and later searched for. Fingerprint matching isn't boolean. When you do a database search you get a list of high probability matches. There are no perfect matches, even between two different images of the exact same finger. Everything is based on probability. For law enforcement purposes, strong matches result in a technician reviewing actual images and making comparisons. For biometric security like this (which is not my area) I expect that there is a threshold percentage match that must be met. The reason this quote concerns me is that while the actual image can't be reproduced, the image isn't the part that matters! The "mathematical representation" is what counts. Whether or not that information is actually secure onboard the phone, I don't know. [0] I have worked with fingerprint processing systems. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint_recognition#Minutia_features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint_recognition#Minutia...