If I understand Scott Loftesness’ post, here’s an interesting idea. Some web sites (eg, Bank of America) use an image as part of their authentication scheme. Suppose instead they showed you an image of someone you know and asked you that person’s name? Okay, so maybe it’s not so great given that it’s not impossible to submit an image to a search engine. But still, I wonder if there’s a good idea in there trying to get out. Somehow using an image of someone as “something you know” seems appealing. Same, as Scott says, for “places you’ve been.” Hmmm…somthing there?

OTOH, maybe the facial thing isn’t so good for people like me. I have a mild (and self-diagnosed) case of prosopagnosia, so unless I’ve met you many times, I probably can’t recognize you. I can’t recognize any of those famous movie stars until I’ve seen them in lots of films, and I’m more easily fooled than most people by changes in hair and makeup.